In message , Jules Richardson
writes
On Thu, 06 May 2010 16:00:59 +0100, Graeme wrote:

The problem. A nine year old son who is *desperate* to download and
play with Ubantu, for reasons unknown.

Find out.

Indeed. I'm not sure that he knows. This post is in danger of
wandering off on a tangent. Son is addicted to his PC and Xbox, and
spends hours fiddling, watching tuition type films on YouTube,
experimenting, and generally poking around, but without any real sense
of purpose. That is not necessarily a bad thing, as he is learning all
the time. I suspect that he has come across references to Ubuntu, and
just wants to know more. Again, I see that as good.

Does he want to learn how Linux works, or does he want to just dive in
and use something that's relatively painless to get up and running but
isn't Windows?

Probably the latter.

(with a Father who knows a little about DOS and Windows but nothing
of Linux).

It all depends on your type of mind, I think. I tend to like stuff that's
clear and concise and just does one task rather than trying to do a
million things at once; I got started with SLS in 1993 (which later
became Slackware) and it all just Made Sense - all the various bits had
well-defined jobs, configuration was quick and easy and not at all
confusing.

OK. Going back a step, his only interest seems to be software based.
I'm not sure that he would even know how to connect the usual plugs to
the back of a PC. He has certainly not looked inside one, and I have
not encouraged him to - I don't want him accidentally touching the wrong
parts, but perhaps I'm over cautious.

Other options are to use the windows box as a remote GUI - or, if he just
wants to learn Linux/UNIX, don't even bother with the GUI at all and just
telnet or ssh to the Linux machine from the windows one via a DOS window.

I wonder whether starting with DOS is a good idea. My first real
exposure to PCs was an ancient Apricot, running their version of DOS
1.something, from memory. I learned a lot, just playing with it, and
writing simple batch files. I still have a 386 somewhere, with DOS 3.3
and W3.1 installed, and should perhaps encourage him to play with that.
--
Graeme