A single attractive, functional, desktop for all ages
You know, after all this talk about roles, I'm having doubts as to
whether it's really important or not. Looking at my own family's use
of Debian we've lived quite well without them. What in fact happens is
not a clear transition from one role to the next. Instead, as the kids
have grown up we've gradually tweaked each person's account to suit
their changing tastes.
I think it would be best to set aside the "roles" idea for now and
instead focus on a single desktop arrangement that is highly usable by
everyone from preschoolers up through adults as a reasonable "starting
point" for making customizations to suit the tastes/needs of people of
all ages. That is, aim for the "lowest common denominator".
We have talked about using a highly constrained "kidproof" desktop
(e.g. making gcompris your "shell") for the very young and recorded
some ideas about that on http://wiki.debian.org/DebianJrSpecialSession
which I think is an excellent idea. But that's pretty specialized.
I think our default desktop should be simple, functional for those who
are a little older (maybe age 4 or so) but not styled in such a way
that older kids can't get at what they want, and not embarrassingly
"preschool" themed.
Ideas?
Ben
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