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Mission.md

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Introduction

The world of disability is largely unseen - until you are thrust into it. This is the position my wife and I found ourselves in, in 2004, when she gave birth to our twins Morgan and James. Due to a condition during pregnancy our boys both have profound disabilities. Morgan has severe spastic cerebral palsy, is quadriplegic and vision impaired. James has severe learning difficulties, is on the autistic spectrum and suffers from anxiety.

The following years have been a massive learning experience and, I hope, character building! What has become abundantly apparent is that there are gaps in the market, for all sorts of specialist provision. And that where specialist provision does exist, applying the label "disabled" or "adapted" to any product or service reduces its market and increases its cost, dramatically. (A specialist bath for Morgan comes in at £10,000, or thereabouts.)

It does not have to be costly, to meet computing needs. This open source (free!) repository contains an Ansible playbook for customising Linux to help users with learning difficulties. The initial aim of this project is to create an Ansible build that converts a Linux installation into something suitable for users (particularly children) with learning difficulties. Later, we may take a more direct approach, creating a Linux distribution with installer.

Why Linux rather than Windows? Several reasons:

  • Cost. Open source licensing allows us to distribute the finished work at no cost to end users - who for the reasons above may aleady find their lives to be expensive!
  • Simplicity. Using open source software as a starting point avoids becoming bogged down in licensing issues.
  • Familiarity. I've been using Linux for over twenty years. I've worked with developers and picked up knowledge of orchestration and text-based configuration. It's much easier for me to achieve this project's goals with Linux.

I'm personally most interested in the protection of users with learning difficulties. So the focus here is on safety and on enabling carers to control the system for the intended user. Spin-offs or bespoke configuration may be appropriate, to target other user groups, but that is not my initial objective.

Goals

Why this playbook? Why this approach?

  1. Accessible fun. This project should enhance the lives of people who may otherwise struggle to use a computer.
  2. Safety. When preparing a computer environment for vulnerable people, their safety is of paramount importance.
  3. Longevity. Many great, education-focused Linux distributions have started well but fizzled out. A low-maintenance strategy is key to survival of a project of this nature. An orchestration approach reduces much of the work normally associated to maintaining a single-purpose operating system, hence Ansible.

Choice of base OS

To support longevity, it is sensible to choose an open base operating system with a good track record and long-term prospects. At the same time, to give end users a degree of choice, it is helpful to select operating systems from more than one family of Linux. This playbook therefore targets Ubuntu, based on Debian, and AlmaLinux, based on Red Hat. It may run on other related distros, but I have not tested that.

TODO

  • Generalise this overall (orchestration) approach to build a reproducible framework for other primary-purpose operating systems - education, ICS, healthcare, etc.
  • Build pipelines (CI/CD) to generate downloadable ISOs, for non-technical users.

Sources for other ideas

There are some existing child-friendly Linux distributions. These do not focus on the needs of users with learning difficulties (a cause dear to my heart) and many of them suffer from a lack of ongoing maintenance. Nevertheless, they are very useful sources of inspiration for this project.

  • Ubermix: still under active development; focused on children and education (but not learning difficulties); has some strong features including "20 second quick recovery mechanism"
  • Elementary Linux OS: mature, actively developed OS built on Ubuntu/Gnome; focused on education and ease-of-use, but not aimed at learning difficulties
  • Debian Edu/Skolelinux: a mature project; last release Jul 2019 after a two-year hiatus; focus is education rather than learning difficulties
  • DoudouLinux: the OS I currently use for my son James (on a machine that is not network-connected); apparently abandoned in 2015
  • Edubuntu: was a benchmark at one point, but now seems to be obsolete; the latest release was in 2016
  • Qimo 4 Kids: project officially retired in 2016
  • openSUSE-Edu Li-f-e: some good packages and features; project stalled in 2016; anUbuntu version exists but its future is not clear; not aimed at learning difficulties
  • LinuxKidX: last updated in 2016, seems to have been abandoned
  • UberStudent: aimed at secondary and higher education; last release 2015
  • Educado: particularly interesting due to its inclusion of parental controls; last release 2014
  • UKnow4Kids: child-friendly Linux; last release was in 2010
  • KnoSciences: educational distribution; last release was in 2006
  • Leeenux Kids: a child-friendly version of Leeenux, a non-free OS that specifically targets netbooks (like the Asus Eee PC); less generalised from a hardware perspective than most other Linux distributions; documentation about Kids version is scant; not focused on learning difficulties