I have 3 children (2,4,6) with another on the way. I have played with a few distros and packages to get a media center and educational game pc setup for them. LinuxMCE is locked down in kubuntu and not very kid-friendly. My 6yo can navigate fine to find the movies she wants/load a DVD, but the younger ones can't. She also uses tuxmath and tuxpaint at school. I liked GCompris and I'd like to find a multi-lingual version of something similar. LinuxKidX looks like it may be a good base if there was a kid-friendly media manager.

What I'm looking for:

1. Kid-friendly navigation with pictures and words
2. large buttons as the younger one's aren't exceptionally accurate with the mouse yet
3. educational game/puzzle suites for 2-10 years
4. video player, title and coverart display for selecting movies
5. multi-lingual educational suite (kids go to an immersion school for english, french, spanish, and traditional chinese)
6. Parental controls for time limits and timeframes

I can manage the setup and config, it doesn't have to be a kid-friendly, or user-friendly, install. I don't need a turn-key solution. If I can install the different packages in a single distro and setup a UI for them, that's fine. Any suggestions?

The system I have built for this:

• Dual-Core Athlon 2.2ghz
• 7.1 HD Audio
• 2Gb RAM
• 2 x 1Tb Hitachi 7200
• NVidia 6800
• 23" Samsung 2333 1920x1080

Take a look at
http://www.brighthub.com/computing/l...les/43224.aspx

There's a Knoppix for Kids, I've never used it, but you could try and see whether it fits your needs. Also, for educational games, try the *website* www.ixl.com , it's (obviously) OS independent.
Also, check out edu.kde.org .

I'm investigating the same. I have a 4 year old kid and a lot of movies and music I would like to give her autonomous access. Besides access restrictions I would like "something" to list movies or directories with music with an associated icon so she can identify them without needing to read.

If someone has already tested different distributions would be easier than testing them myself