HACKER Q&A
📣 libredad

Best open laptop for a young learner?


My daughter is about to turn 7 years old. She is interested in computers and wants to learn to program and/or do creative tasks with it.

I'm an engineer myself and want to help her explore technology as I was curious from a young age as well and it's how I got started. RPG Maker 95 single handledly got me into programming!

Money isn't an issue, but I'd rather not purchase something like a MacBook. I am hoping to find a more open device and have her explore more of it with me.

My current thinking is:

1. Raspberry Pi, we could set one up with a monitor, keyboard, mouse, etc.

2. PineBook Pro, seems relatively open and capable enough for her needs.

As or software, I am also open to suggestions. I have done Scratch Jr with her on an iPad in the past and she liked it. I am thinking of using Scratch with a keyboard and mouse to get her typing and learning logic/creating stuff.

I'd love additional suggestions of fun/creative software available on Linux.

  👤 legrande Accepted Answer ✓
My suggestion is to install Cloudready[0] on it. It's secure and less likely your daughter will install something malicious on it. Also this OS is mainly for the Chromium browser and you can still do coding / logic / creating stuff on it using online services. You can turn any laptop into a Chromebook with this and it's a no brainer for kids. Just make sure you update Chromium as much as possible.

[0] https://www.neverware.com/freedownload

👤 michelledepeil
My suggestion would be a refurbished Thinkpad X230 and install a nice stable Linux distro (Linux Mint with XFCE for instance). It's open and repairable enough to scratch that itch, and the specific flavour of Linux gives stability but also configurability and exploration options. Get a low-spec laptop and start by replacing the HDD with an SSD and adding more RAM, then creating a bootable USB and installing the OS.

IMO the RPi is quite fragile , and the PBP seems a bit fragile and _very_ unstable to me, though they are both certainly far more open/free.

👤 pabs3
Maybe the MNT or the not yet released MNT Pocket?

https://mntre.com/media/reform_md/2022-06-20-introducing-mnt... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31899377

👤 mikelnrd
https://starlabs.systems/pages/starlite
👤 stop50
Maybe the framework notebook could be also an choice.