There's been many good suggestions here.

I'll add in catlateral damage (first person game where you're a cat and you knock things onto the floor) and cat quest 2 (streamlined action RPG) were pretty popular here too. They're both windows builds but have run well for me under proton.

Think I might report back in. Both my now 7 and 9 year old are enjoying Portal and Portal 2. I might try to find some other games like that!

Salt I must confess, we are playing it on Switch. The experience is superior to Steam using a steam link in almost every possible way. Especially when it comes to multiple accounts and ease of use.

I haven't given up on Linux gaming in the living room. It's just up against stiff competition.

Very interesting thread, I took only 2 years to notice it lol. My kid (8) started playing recently (Linux desktop and steam deck) and so far the favourites are:

Stardew Valley (local multiplayer is great)
Lego games
Cat Quest
Lara Croft GO
Feather
Sonic & SEGA All-Stars Racing (this is a meh for me but there is Sonic in it lol)

How do you get your kids to use Linux, especially on non Deck situations? Don't they ask for Windows because that's basically what most gamers and possibly what their friends use and also has less hassle?

How do you get your kids to use Linux, especially on non Deck situations? Don't they ask for Windows because that's basically what most gamers and possibly what their friends use and also has less hassle?

It was never an issue for me. Long before we had a Steam Deck, my kids played on my desktop computer, running Steam on Ubuntu. Steam is the same, the game controls are the same, and Proton made it so compatibility was almost never an issue (I can think of less than a handful of instances over ... five years?).

Maybe if a kid wants to play only a very specific game - does Fortnite work on Linux? I haven't got a clue - and refuses to touch others, it might be a problem, but otherwise there are so many games and they work great on Linux.

How do you get your kids to use Linux, especially on non Deck situations? Don't they ask for Windows because that's basically what most gamers and possibly what their friends use and also has less hassle?

To be honest so far Windows is the outlier. At school it's all iPads, and my kid's friends gaming seems to be mostly on phones (yuk!) or consoles... I'm quite sure some kids have never used a physical keyboard! Of course it might change in middle-high schools but so far it's a no-issue. Specifically to my kid we only have Linux machines at home and it seems to be all we need for gaming at this point.

How do you get your kids to use Linux, especially on non Deck situations? Don't they ask for Windows because that's basically what most gamers and possibly what their friends use and also has less hassle?

Windows doesn't functionally exist for children.

1) Microsoft does not target primary education, instead focusing on picking them up at University or the workplace. Google owns most of primary school education.
My friend is an English teacher at Uni. She has to teach the kids how to "save" files in Word and other basics (cause it automatic in Google classroom). The kids aren't dumb, they just have no exposure to Office/Windows. It's often enough, she has it in her curriculum for first years.

2) Consoles and tablets are superior in use and function for a lot of things. It's just easier to use a console to game than a PC, even a Windows PC. I love PC gaming, but my experience trying to get Steam into my living room vs our Nintendo Switch... The Switch is just better at it.
Even outside of gaming, my PC's don't have an email client, I use my phone (if I'm being honest, it's my primary computing device). The kids use Kindle fire for edutainment and communication.


By the same token, Linux doesn't really functionally exist for kids either; or rather exposure to Desktop PC's.... They're simply not really needed anymore.

So in one sense, it's pretty easy to get *our* children to use Linux; their exposure to Windows outside of our homes is minimal; there's no "missing out" on anything.

Even outside of gaming, my PC's don't have an email client, I use my phone (if I'm being honest, it's my primary computing device).

Are you writing messages longer than 40 words with a mobile - or aren't you writing those in the first place? Or do you use voice recognition? What would beat a keyboard with respect to speed and accuracy while keeping basic privacy?

Last edited by Eike on 19 January 2023 at 12:55 pm UTC

Even outside of gaming, my PC's don't have an email client, I use my phone (if I'm being honest, it's my primary computing device).

Are you writing messages longer than 40 words with a mobile - or aren't you writing those in the first place? Or do you use voice recognition? What would beat a keyboard with respect to speed and accuracy while keeping basic privacy?

Clearly, as evidenced by my post above; written on mobile while I sit on my couch, lol. I use swipe gestures to write. The biggest issue is autocorrect. Obviously, I wouldn't recommend touch or mobile for complicated writings, but for simple communications, like this, it's fine. For school, my children were issued Chromebooks with keyboards. I know someone above mentioned using tablets (perhaps with a wireless keyboard?)
Some stuff just doesn't work well on a mobile format, but I'm surprised how little I need my desktop for day to day tasks at home (work is a different story).

Back to Linux gaming:
I *finally* got Night of the Rabbit working on my PC via Steam Link. It works only with an older Proton version. I'm hoping to try it this weekend (I've wanted to for a bit, but evening time free is pretty rare)

Clearly, as evidenced by my post above; written on mobile while I sit on my couch, lol.

Erm, yes. :D

I use swipe gestures to write. The biggest issue is autocorrect.

I'm using swipe as well but writing a post like yours feels uncomfortable to me.

For autocorrect in the sense of "I know you typed 'vere', but I'm sure you mean 'were' and I'll just replace it for you!", this is the first I switch off when configuring a mobile. I know what I want to write, and sometimes I just want to write it differently or type a word you don't know, thank you very much. I still get results I didn't want when using swipe from the recognition algorithm, though.

Linux kids gaming: My five year old platin'ed Paw Patrol - On a Roll (with a little help in the very last level). :)

Last edited by Eike on 20 January 2023 at 9:40 am UTC

What you should not play with your little kids, despite it looking all sweet and stuff: Beyond The Edge Of Owlsgard. I didn't intend to tell my children why there's loads of

Spoiler, click me

bones streaming to a bone mill

and show them how we

Spoiler, click me

throw a bomb at the semi-electronical evil super brain

in the end or how

Spoiler, click me

the protagonist dies

if we're missing one certain thing.

Other than that, a good point and click, although I didn't like the voice-overs too much (neither German nor English).

Overcooked 2 is what's captivating my 5.75 and 3.5 year-olds these days.

Sometimes they really try (the older one that is), sometimes they just want to be mischiefs (jump in the water, throw the food in the trash can, start fires and put them out etc) which is also fun :D

Overcooked 2 is what's captivating my 5.75 and 3.5 year-olds these days.

Sometimes they really try (the older one that is), sometimes they just want to be mischiefs (jump in the water, throw the food in the trash can, start fires and put them out etc) which is also fun :D

We haven't even gotten to 2 yet, we're still on the original, but yes. My kids, plus friends if we have them over, running around the screen and screaming happily about everything. It's hard on the ears, but they love it.

Some what tangential to the conversation, I know it was touched on a little bit a few pages back, but I saw this article while browsing. While a bunch of our conversation here has been on younger kids and games that aren't necessarily online MP, they had some interesting insights especially concerning online play.

Worried about your kids' video gaming? Explore their online worlds yourself

I did chuckle at the part where they mentioned how online gaming behavior can translate into real world behavior. The sheer number of memes I hear little kids shouting while playing tag is hilarious 🤣😂🤣😂

Last edited by denyasis on 31 May 2023 at 10:38 pm UTC

Hi,
I just take out an old pc that I have for my 10 year old kid (the poor laptop that she had decide that surviving the pandemic was enough and the motherboard kaput).

The thing is that after installing AntiX (It had linux mint 13) and I need a 386 distro I find that there is a lot of games on this thread that will not run....

For now I have
- Fceux
- Scummvm
- Dosbox (civilization)

My next step is running some casual games with wine (Burger shop and Plant vs Zombies)

 
$ neofetch 
       _,met$$$$$gg.          kid@falcon 
    ,g$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$P.       ------------ 
  ,g$$P"     """Y$$.".        OS: Debian GNU/Linux 11 (bullseye) i686 
 ,$$P'              `$$$.     Kernel: 4.9.0-326-antix.1-486-smp 
',$$P       ,ggs.     `$$b:   Uptime: 58 secs 
`d$$'     ,$P"'   .    $$$    Packages: 1619 (dpkg) 
 $$P      d$'     ,    $$P    Shell: bash 5.1.4 
 $$:      $$.   -    ,d$$'    Resolution: 1920x1080 
 $$;      Y$b._   _,d$P'      Terminal: /dev/pts/0 
 Y$$.    `.`"Y$$$$P"'         CPU: AMD Sempron 145 (1) @ 2.800GHz 
 `$$b      "-.__              GPU: NVIDIA GeForce 7025 / nForce 630a 
  `Y$$                        Memory: 78MiB / 3027MiB 
   `Y$$.
     `$$b.                                            
       `Y$$b.                                         
          `"Y$b._
              `"""
Any suggestion on really low resources games ?

Any suggestion on really low resources games ?

A Short Hike maybe?
The Putt-Putt adventures, if she's not feeling too old for that?

I need a 386 distro

Sempron 145 is AMD64.

Any suggestion on really low resources games ?

Given that you've listed FCEUX, I would also suggest adding Snes9x as well if it's available, since the SNES also had a lot of superb games which should run just fine on the hardware that you're working with.

I need a 386 distro

Sempron 145 is AMD64.

It's true but is only one core, it run better on 386. Apart that I only have 4gb of RAM, so no real advantage.

Any suggestion on really low resources games ?

Given that you've listed FCEUX, I would also suggest adding Snes9x as well if it's available, since the SNES also had a lot of superb games which should run just fine on the hardware that you're working with.

I'll try! I'm really use to Higan and bones that are monsters of resources I completely forgot of snes9x