- I have a seven year old nephew who I would like to find some computing activities that we could do together. Any ideas?
I do not recommend using a seven year old as a server for the following reasons.
- their parents will get mad
- the neighbors might call the police about all the children you have racked in your basement
- they have poor computing power, wait until they’re at least in their late teens (although software updates come too late and the system is usually very unstable at that time.)
- think of the smell! your house will smell like a kindergarten
- food costs are already high enough, add two or four growing kids to that budget and it’s far cheaper to run a couple Dell R610s every month.
overall, not worth it mate. good luck though!
They are also very noisy, so a basement location might not be enough to suppress the humming and yelling from reaching your living areas.
@walden This conversation feels like it has taken a dark turn and could be used against me in court one day …but to be clear…houses generally dont have basements in new zealand
Yeah… I hesitated to hit “submit”, but figured the courts would rule in our favor because courts have a good sense of humor!
@GreenKnight23 I aggree totally but comparing their LLM to the 2.5 year old… Its consideribly more advanced… though it still seems to overuse words like ‘why’, ‘when’ and 'do you have $20 for this game"
Hedy is an open source programming language that is broken into levels for easy learning. As you progress the language gains more capabilities, so they are never overwhelmed with too much
In contrast to block based languages like scratch its goal is to leave students ready to switch to Python by the end.
Each level has small tasks to complete so you can tackle it piece by piece and get a sense of progression.
@IanTwenty Hey this looks cool. Will see if he gets into it
Haha the one word he knows is #Minecraft so yeah it sounds like that will be task one. I can do that on a #Proxmox server I have.
You could also think about Lunati modding because it uses Lua for this, an easy-to-use programming language. https://docs.luanti.org/for-creators/creating-mods/
I showed interest at around this age and my dad showed me CentOS and building basic webpages. I didn’t take too much interest in that, but I asked him if we could build a Counter Strike server and he obliged. He’s a nerd himself so we had a static IP for the server and everything. Worked well!
Anyway, I would recommend getting an old desktop and installing Ubuntu server or desktop edition with a desktop environment. Show him how to navigate the command line and what that means if you follow the file explorer at the same time. And then hosting very basic things(webpages, local game servers, etc.).
He might really latch onto it, or might not be interested whatsoever. I latched onto it, ended up building my own PCs soon after, and have my own homelab and I work as a full time Linux sysadmin now.
@eli I have an old Windows laptop. I need to figure out how to do dual boot with Linux … and get my vpn sorted (again) so he can use VMs on my Proxmox box
I have an old Windows laptop. I need to figure out how to do dual boot with Linux
For this I would recommend:
- Install Windows first
- In Windows, partition the disk drive to how much storage you want. So if you have a 1TB, then maybe do 500GB for Windows and 500GB for Linux? Leave the new partition as unformatted/unallocated
- Boot up your linux installer and select the unformatted/unallocated partition for Linux to install to. Don’t erase whole disk. But let Linux setup all of it’s own formatting and partitions on the empty space
Now why do it this way? Because Windows does NOT like the boot manager being replaced and does NOT like disk space go “missing” unless it allocates it itself. If you install Windows first it’ll setup the boot manager for Windows and then when you install Linux grub will get installed and that can manage Windows pretty well.
And if you let Windows partition off the blank space for Linux then Windows knows that that empty partition isn’t owned by Windows anymore and it won’t freak out seeing the space go missing when Linux takes it over.
This article covers most: https://linuxblog.io/dual-boot-linux-windows-install-guide/
If you have two individual disk drives then I would do the same thing, install Windows on one of the drives, boot into Windows, and make sure the second drive shows up in disk utility, but it isn’t formatted for use in Windows, just unallocated/blank. Then when you install Linux you just tell it to install onto the second drive.
and get my vpn sorted (again) so he can use VMs on my Proxmox box
I would 100% recommend Tailscale for this. You can install Tailscale on the Proxmox host and then have your nephew have his own Tailscale account where you can give him access to only the Proxmox box.
I do this with my Proxmox boxes so I can remotely manage them wherever I am. When you first install Tailscale on Proxmox it may require a reboot, so I would recommend being nearby the server so you can login physically if needed, but after it has been smooth sailing for me. Been using it like this for a year or two now.
Of course just a suggestion.
@eli Thanks. Appreciate it. I have a VPN configured between the different locations and subnets I have at the moment with a bit if policy based routing to control what can access what… I just bring the remote location back online
I’d argue home assistant with some smart LEDs and a few sensors would be great.
Having a bulb that let’s you know the outside temperature/weather when you’re getting dressed in the morning is neat. Having a dimming pattern for sleeping time. Tons of other really simple stuff available too.
@BlameThePeacock Yeah I think I will get some light switches and see if we can do some rouitines.
OP, just wanted to say that involving your young nephew in constructive computer projects/activities is super cool. You get a Good Noodle star on your chart.
@irmadlad Thanks. I live a long way away amd only get to visit occasionally so as they get older the opportunity to do things together online is important to me.
the opportunity to do things together online is important to me
Respect
@irmadlad I’m not saying that I am actually achieving that … lol …
You may never fully understand the positive impact that one person’s genuine interest in a child will make.
HTML Website is cool. A child of that age might be able to write basic HTML. I wasn’t much older when I made my own site
Minecraft server. Then Pufferpanel, then modding. Tons to learn.
Put it in a VM for him and take snapshots for easy recovery.
You can show them how to mod something they already play/like
Wow I really appreciate the feedback. After quite a bit of changes and home moves that disrupted alot of what selfhosted stuff I setup, a bit of disallusionment with doing it alone and difficulty staying connected with my nephew remotely these give me some good ideas. I need to find out more about Minecraft and hosting a server sounds like a good idea, I liked the simple coding with audio feedback as well. Its motivating me to get messgaing and chat sorted out as well. I am also going to see if I can find some shared #Spanish #languagelearning tools.
I need to find out more about Minecraft and hosting a server sounds like a good idea
I’ve hosted both Minecraft and Luanti (free open source Minecraft). Either is a great idea!
That said, I found setting up a Luanti server slightly simpler (because no need for everyone to have a Microsoft account, and no Java dependencies to worry about): https://docs.luanti.org/for-server-hosts/setup/
Luanti has lots of options, but a good default choice is Mineclonia: https://content.luanti.org/packages/ryvnf/mineclonia/
@pinball_wizard With a Luanti server does every Minecraft player still need a Minecraft licence?
Luanti and Minecraft are two distinct, if similar-looking things.
Luanti is an open-source voxel game engine implementation which allows running a wide variety of different ‘games’ on it (including two which mimic Minecraft very closely, like the above-mentioned Mineclonia).
Minecraft is the closed-source game owned by Mojang.
The two don’t interact and servers for the one are completely unrelated to the other as well.
So, to answer the question - yes, they still need a Minecraft license if they want to play Minecraft. But this is disconnected from having a Luanti server, for which you don’t need any licenses but which will in turn also only allow you to play Luanti stuff, not Minecraft.
@hoppolito Oh cool. Ok. I have plenty to learn there
Scratch, theres a foss alternative you can selfhost I think
That would be Snap!
don’t thinks the one I saw, mightve been a flathub app not a selfhosted thing
Scratch isn’t FOSS? That sucks
My kid is 9, and it’s all Minecraft and I just installed a non federated synapse server so they can text family without having to deal with parental controls. At that age, I figure it’s more about having fun, and if they learn typing skills on the way, big win
Hi how hard is it for a complete beginner to setup a nonfederated synapse server at hardware at home? I am looking for a FOSS solution for a selfhosted messenger for family and friends to stay away from the corporations and governments and people recommend mostly either xmpp or matrix but the guides seem too complicated( Can you share the guide(s) that you’ve followed?
Honestly? It was a pain, I used several different guides and they were all out of date in different ways. Unfortunately, it looks like external users are having connectivity problems, that I’ll try to solve next week when I have time.
@ewigkaiwelo @Tolookah Yunohost has an integrated xmpp server I think
I recommend to read a tutorial of docker and docker compose. Then the setup of stuff like synapse is a few minutes task. (Non-federation is a simple option in the config file).
After watching Luke Smith I’ve got an impression that docker and containerization is not a way to go, but maybe would be good for a start
There are certainly some discussions with whatever high level considerations. But for ease of setup it is definitely a way.
Ah, and with a non-federation setup you can skip all the more finicky parts of the installation (DNS, .well-known, bla bla) or just a simple server that needs to be reachable by the client.
Minecraft server.
Minecraft server + mods + introducing scripting his own mods/customizations? Suggested simply because gaming is a great way to introduce computing concepts that kids can visually see the output from.
Otherwise, I’d suggest showing him how to create his own web pages, creating visual programming games, etc. Find his favorite hobbies (music, art, animals) and start creating something around that hobby so that the computing piece is just as interesting.
