A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.
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A Minecraft server is the classic.
Don't discount just putting together a basic webpage that can be accessed at home too- something he could put together in a basic HTML editor (drag and drop) and put his favorite things on or whatever he may be focusing on (cars, animals, space, you name it).
I definitely agree on a vanilla Minecraft server.
It's really simple but you can go very deep in what you could do with it. Also it's a game and brings a playful fun aspect into the technical world.
It's pretty much how I started to learn everything about networking years ago.
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.
I do not recommend using a seven year old as a server for the following reasons.
overall, not worth it mate. good luck though!
@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"
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!
I don't get why people continue to recommend Minecraft when there is the much better open-source Luanti project: https://www.luanti.org/
That project looks pretty nice, I've seen it before. When I ran a MineCraft server, I was heavy into shaders, plugins, addons, etc. I would say that the draw to MineCraft is that there are just endless things to integrate, almost infinitely if you have the resources to run it. As heavy into MineCraft as I got, I'm pretty sure I didn't even come close to exhausting it's possibilities.
This is confusing. So, Luanti is basically a clone of Minecraft? The docs say how to download the basic platform, and then to download any game.
But where do you start? There's no recommended or default game or world?
No, Luanti is a platform for Minecraft like games, like a place to find lots of user generated games and such, I guess Roblox is a bit similar to that (I never tried Roblox, so I am guessing). It is also fairly easy to make your own games with it.
There are however games for Luanti that are very similar to Minecraft such as Voxelibre and Minecloina.
Just be mindful of people online
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.
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?
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).
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.
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
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.
Minecraft server. Then Pufferpanel, then modding. Tons to learn.
Put it in a VM for him and take snapshots for easy recovery.
I think educational activities work best once they have some application to someones life. So it'd be something within the realm of a 7yo. And it's not fun unless there's a sense of achievement every now and then, along with all the stuff to learn. So probably not too steep of a learning curve.
Sadly they discontinued Lego Mindstorms. I think robotics is a great hands-on topic. People can grasp what they're currently doing, why they do it, and what it's good for. It has a tactile aspect, so you'll train dexterity as well and gently connect the physical realm with the maths.
But other than that, I bet there's a lot of things you can try. Design a website (and deploy a small webserver). Maybe some easy to use photo gallery if they have a tablet or camera. Maybe a Wordpress for them to write a Blog? They should be familiar with the concept of a diary. Kids love Minecraft, so maybe a Luanti server if you're into Free Software. But learn how to add NPCs and animals, that is (or used to be?) a complicated process in Luanti and the world feels boring and empty without. A chat server to their loved ones could motivate them to read and write text (messages). Or skip the selfhosting aspect and do the kids games available for Linux. Paint, LibreOffice...
I like the recommendations from other people as well. Sadly I don't know which kids programming language works best. I think I heard you can just go straight for Python as well. Not sure if that's true or what age group that applies to. It's a bit more involved to learn the syntax and why you need brackets around certain things etc but at least they get to learn the real deal and something properly useful. 7 might be a bit young, though. And there might be a language barrier. But that applies to all the computer stuff behind the scenes, unless you're a native English speaker.
Video games come to mind. You could probably figure out how to host a game server of their choice (think something like Minecraft) so him and his friends can play. Docker is a nice shortcut for that, and you also get to sprinkle in some networking knowledge too for opening ports and such.
If games are off the table, could try to figure out some hardware to interact with. Having some sort of robot that you can control with an API could be fun.
On the line with hardware, you can get a raspberry pi, and try to work with him to blink an LED via Scratch or Python. Then work to something even bigger.
If typing is a struggle you could do typeracer or something like that to figure out who can type faster.
You could build a basic website together with some CSS and HTML. Make like, a fan site for his favorite band (or whatever hes into). Maybe he wants to make something for his friends to see.
Or, ask them if there is something theyve wanted to know how it works...then build some sort of project using 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
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.
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
You can show them how to mod something they already play/like
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.