It would be interesting to generate a list of 'must haves' which would turn Linux into a more attractive proposition for UK primary use.
From my experiences in the classroom and at home (I have 4 children,
The usual server side things apply - except that many primary schools would not have an IT technicial to learn about things to set them up - so tend to rely more on bought in pre configured machines or similar. My daughters school has no network to speak of and is only just starting to put together a computer lab - its currently all standalone workstations with modems, printers and CDRoms. There are no real servers of any kind for Linux to replace! On the desktop side, key uses of computers in my kids nursery/early years classes uses: 1. early learning multimedia (living books, DK, etc) - most of which I can run under Win 3.11 at home (I have not tried under Wine ...) 2. Old BBC stuff running on RM BBC emulators or native RM stuff 3. Some native DOS shareware type stuff 4. Simple things like notepad and paintbrush type programs. It should be possible to write new stuff for 2, 3 or 4, (like "Linux Letters and Numbers" for example) but I don't know of much of it. There are also basic notepad/painting programs with all the GUI environments (plus cat & mouse type games for mouse practise, etc). Another issue is that using RM or Win 3.11 on machines means that they can get away with running on quite low spec machines - X just wouldn't cut it - otherwise, I would have been tempted to write a few simple kids games in perl/tk for my own family use (basic counting, animation, etc). I was following some of the low spec GUI on LInux developments (QT embedded, frame buffer, small X servers, etc) - but have lost touch, due to lack of time. the oldest is 6) - until multimedia is available, desktops will stay Windows based. There is also the support issue in a school with no real current IT support for Windows (let alone Linux). In our local case, support would have to come from parents (ie people like me) - and those of us interested in Linux, are usually in full time employment anyway doing other things :) Just my thoughts ... Kevin.