Made a Half Dozen Linux Machines With Kids, For Kids

On our local online forum I requested old laptops and got a dozen, most with Windows XP and Vista. I teach sixth grade and my students had no idea what was inside a laptop or how OS worked. We found that half of the laptops booted up and seemed to work. I figured if anything would work it would be a Linux kernel.

My first problem was finding a kernel that would still run on some very old laptops. Indeed, when I opened the drive of one a 2004 mix tape "best of the year" CD was there. From suggestions here, I went with Xubuntu. Not only is it lightweight enough for these old machines, but finding a 32 bit iso was not difficult.

Unfortunately, few of the machines would boot from USB. Someone suggested creating a bootable disk, which I have not done in a decade. Amazingly, I still had a stack of burnable disks. Unfortunately, none of my computers even have a drive, my external only plays and even my work computers are play-only. I booted up three of the donor laptops before I found one that did not password me out of Windows. That drive was broken, but my students had removed the drives of other donors and were able to replace this one. Success.

I burned the boot disk and it worked like a dream. Xubuntu is a great OS and the two laptops we've done so far are pretty quick and nimble. Now, two students who have no computer at home have something to work on. It all leaves me wondering how to expand the program.