Like any modern parent, I want to expose my kids to computers and the educational resources available on the Internet. But I’m also sensitive to the cost (both in terms of time and money) of managing my kids’ machines; and there are always issues of safety, too. That’s where DoudouLinux comes in. The fact that Linux can run on fairly old hardware is very appealing, and the fact that DoudouLinux runs off a thumb drive means I don’t even need to find a separate computer for the kids. I plug the Live USB into a computer, and I don’t have to worry that the kids may accidentally break something, download malicious or inappropriate content, or delete critical files on my computer. 

Technically, there is no reason to bother with a kid-specific Linux distribution since you can easily take a regular distribution and configure it with kid-specific applications and settings. However, kid-friendly distributions such as DoudouLinux and Qimo Linux provide a far-better user experience for younger kids. In the case of DoudouLinux, you can boot up and use the applications right away, without bothering with system settings.

Oh, and in case you were wondering, the name actually refers to the French word “doudou,” which means “wubby,” or teddy bear. The kids keep giggling every time I say the name, though.

Kid-Friendly Interface
DoudouLinux does one thing well, and that is to provide a tightly-focused set of kid-friendly applications in an easy-to-use interface. The navigation system is dead simple, with links to about fifty kid-friendly applications for educational and fun games, work applications, and multimedia software. All the programs are grouped under Learn, Work and Enjoy tabs on the top part of the screen. When you click the tab, all the programs in the group are displayed underneath in a neat, tiled interface. Kids just click once—no double-clicking required—to run a program, and all applications run full-screen. Pretty simple.

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DoudouLinux is a Debian 5-based distribution using a heavily customized LXDE desktop. The environment is geared towards kids, which means there is no console and no command line. This may annoy Linux-savvy parents, but is perfect for newbie Linux parents and kids. It boots up very quickly, and the introductory screen lets the user go straight into a game or package, load the “mini” version of the desktop, or use the full desktop environment.

Where to Install
The whole system fits on a CD or DVD or a USB key as a Live distribution, which means there is nothing to install. If you don’t have a spare computer lying around for the kids, being able to boot an existing computer into a protected environment for the kids is an attractive prospect. When booting up, the distribution lets you decide to start DoudouLinux fresh, or “with persistence,” in which kids can save some files to the USB drive.

Say you do have a dedicated computer and you don’t want to deal with using the Live CD—you can certainly install DouDouLinux onto the hard drive. Because the goal is to make it as simple as possible, there is no partitioning tool and there are no user accounts—Next: DouDouLinux User Interface

Next: DoudouLinux User Interface

DoudouLinux is guaranteed to run on PCs made after 2006, and has modest requirements: 256MB memory, 800MHz CPU, and an 800×600 display. I ran it on a 5-year old HP Mini netbook with no trouble. The CD and USB images are available in multiple languages, from Arabic to Ukrainian, and the operating system has a built-in user manual. Just click on the help icon on the screen and you get to the user manual, which can also be downloaded in several languages.

DoudouLinux Applications
Kids can run Child’s Play or Gcompris, two popular collections of Linux-based games, or Tux Paint, the drawing and painting program. There are plenty of other educational games built for the KDE desktop such as Kanagram, Gamine, and Geography, and all of them run on DouDouLinux. Of course, there are plenty of other KDE apps the distro can run, too, in the adventure, arcade, board-game, card, logic, and sports-game spaces. I really liked KTurtle, a tool that lets kids practice programming using a version of the LOGO language. Multimedia tools include audio applications such as the Hydrogen drum kit, the GNOME sound recorder, Timidity software MIDI sequencer, and StopMotion for making stop-motion movies. DoudouLinux supports networking so your kids can surf the Web using the Epiphany browser and chat with other people using the Empathy instant messaging client.

There is no word-processing software, but OpenDict, Gcalc, Gedit, GNOME image viewer, and Evince document viewer are all included. The logic seems to be that most kids won’t need a full-fledged word processing suite. This is the first indicator that DoudouLinux may be best for the early school, or pre-school crowd.

As mentioned earlier, the introductory screen gives users three ways to use DoudouLinux: selecting the appropriate package or application directly, opening up “Mini DoudouLinux,” or opening “Whole DoudouLinux.” Mini DoudouLinux offers only two tabs: Learn and Tune. The Learn tab contains a subset of all the applications on the operating system, and includes Childsplay, Tux Paint, Potato Guy, and Piano Keyboard. The Tune tab controls volume, printers, and mouse settings. Whole DoudouLinux displays all five tabs and lets the user access all installed applications.

Security, Privacy, Controls
The built-in Epiphany Web browser is privacy-conscious, as it blocks pop-up windows, removes advertisements displayed on Web pages, and disables tracking cookies used by third-party services. By default, the Web browser uses the privacy-conscious DuckDuckGo search engine, rather than Google. 

DoudouLinux also ships with built-in Web content filtering tool DansGuardian, to ensure kids don’t stumble onto some of the more unsavory parts of the Internet. DansGuardian doesn’t use straight URL blocklists, but analyzes the page’s content and blocks potentially objectionable items if they match the list of banned terms.

Since the filters are built into DoudouLinux, they can’t be modified or bypassed easily. It can at time be a little too strict. I couldn’t get to the Encyclopedia Britannica page for Marie Curie for a school report because the page contained some content which triggered the Gambling filter. The filters seem okay for the pre-school crowd, but not so much for kids who would need to use the Web for research.

Unlike a traditional Linux distribution, DoudouLinux is not designed to be flexible or be configurable. What you see is what you get.

Will I Keep This Distro?
The beauty of Linux is the fact that the distribution can be customized for kids. I like Qimo Linux because it is an easy-to-use system for young kids, but I am concerned about its lack of security controls. DoudouLinux addresses that gap with parental controls, a privacy-conscious Web browser, and a locked-down operating system. Even though I likely won’t keep it as the default OS on the kids’ computer, I will keep the USB drive so that in a pinch I can always fire up DoudouLinux for their use when they don’t have access to their own dedicated system. DoudouLinux makes it easy for kids to play games, learn a programming language, surf the Web, or run educational software. While a good OS for kids who’ve graduated from Qimo, school-aged kids will quickly find the controls highly restrictive.