GCompris

GCompris, also known as I Got IT, is an open source and award winning educational project designed from the ground up to offer a wide range of activities suited for children aged 2 to 10. It is part of the GNU project and uses a full-screen user interface, specifically designed to help children concentrate only on the activities and not on what the operating system does in the background, though it should need a little bit of polishing here and there.

Features at a glance

Key features include numerous activities for your kids, including computer discovery, learn to tell time, arithmetic functions, vector drawing, science and geography tasks, puzzle of famous paintings, cartoon making, and reading topics, as well as some game-oriented ones, but still educational.

With this software, kids can discover what is a computer and how to use it, starting with the mouse and keyboard, and continuing with different mouse gestures and how to use software applications.

In addition, children will be able to learn various facts about farm animals and what sounds they make, learn about various music instruments and music notes, discover the Braille system, understand colors, and much more.

At the moment, the application offers over 100 activities for young children, with more of them coming in future versions. It is available for download from the default software channels of your Linux distribution.

Under the hood, supported OSes and hardware platforms

Under the hood, we can report that the software is written entirely in the C and Python programming languages and supports GNU/Linux, BSD, Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X operating systems. It runs well on both 32-bit and 64-bit hardware platforms.

Bottom line

All in all, GCompris is an unique software suite that gathers together several open source educational applications for small children, helping them to easily and quickly learn many new things. It is distributed by default in many educational operating systems, such as Edubuntu.

What is new in this release:

• Major fixes:
• play_rhythm, fixed black background issue, this activity was not usable.
• Minor:
• Fxed confusion around translator context in geography
• Fxed several typo in English
• memory*, more appropriate difficulty level
• Added new standard desktop file gcompris.appdata
• Translation update:
• Updated Brazilian Portuguese translation by Rafael Ferreira
• Updated Czech translation by Marek Cernocky'
• Updated Scottish Gaelic translation by GunChleoc
• Updated Greek translation by Yannis Kaskamanidis

What is new in version 14.07:

• Major fixes:
• play_rhythm, fixed black background issue, this activity was not usable.
• Minor:
• Fxed confusion around translator context in geography
• Fxed several typo in English
• memory*, more appropriate difficulty level
• Added new standard desktop file gcompris.appdata
• Translation update:
• Updated Brazilian Portuguese translation by Rafael Ferreira
• Updated Czech translation by Marek Cernocky'
• Updated Scottish Gaelic translation by GunChleoc
• Updated Greek translation by Yannis Kaskamanidis

What is new in version 14.05:

• Major fixes:
• Exclude known symbol fonts from the font selector
• Now the python path separator is ';' on windows. Before that it was not possible to install GCompris on another disk drive on Windows (other than C:)
• Added missing timer images (the balloon) in the multiplication table activity.
• Translation update:
• Updated Russian translation by Yuri Myasoedov
• Updated Greek translation by Yannis Kaskamanidis
• Updated french translation by Bruno Coudoin
• Updated Norwegian bokmal translation by Erlend Thune

What is new in version 14.03:

• Major features:
• Added support for multigraph languages in click_on_letter by GunChleoc.
• Added a font selector in the config dialog box by Bruno Coudoin. This feature replaces the skin selector. Removed the skin gartoon as it is useless now.
• Minor changes:
• Replaced torta py pastel in Spanish text exercise
• Added support for localized sound by GunChleoc. The 'yummy yummy' gnumch voice can now be translated in voices/$LOCALE/misc/eat.wav
• Added a cute background to hexagon by Bruno Coudoin. The background comes from openclipart.org.
• Updated FSF's address by Daniel Mustieles.
• Geography, fixed reference to sri_lanka.ogg by Bruno Coudoin.
• Hangman, added missing word files by Bruno Coudoin. The Scottish Gaelic word list was not installed. Added a French word list. Fixed support for accentuated letters. The code that also check for accentuated letter in the word to find was broken.
• Fixed administration to accept UTF-8 user entries by Bruno Coudoin.
• Fixed login by text entry by Bruno Coudoin.
• Fixed admin log list, user 0 was missing by Bruno Coudoin.
• Fixed a typo in the help ctrl-x is now ctrl-q by Bruno Coudoin.
• Awale activity, fixes some bugs especially party end by Nicolas Adenis-Lamarre.
• Leftright, fixed manual. better button name for translation by Bruno Coudoin.
• Fixed wartercycle and hydroelectric activity click events by Hans de Goede.
• Added bonus files from gartoon skin by Bruno Coudoin.
• Changed default skin as gartoon, babytoy has been removed
• Windows installer, fixed image format by Bruno Coudoin.
• Config dialog layout change to make more room for texts by Bruno Coudoin.
• Lang, fixed 'back to last level' mode by Bruno Coudoin. Fixed call to bonus so that we properly log success to each exercise.
• Lang, fixed startup sequence in remember level mode by Bruno Coudoin. The ready button was bypassed in remember level mode.
• Lang, fixed a python exec error case by Bruno Coudoin. If we have an error in the startup sequence a variable was used non initialized.
• Lang activity, replaced http://laske.fr/abecedarium/ by our own online version at http://gcompris.net/activity/lang (global replace in the code and the translations).
• Administration, layout improvement by Bruno Coudoin. the module labels was too large. replaced them by tooltips.
• Change back our licence file to properly report GPLV3+
• Fixed selection of internal gnuchess by default by Cosimo Cecchi
• click-on-letter, added french accentuated letters.
• gnumch, fixed localization of eat.wav. A localize eat.wav can be provided in voices/$LOCALE/misc/eat.wav
• Translation update:
• Fixed Russian translation by Stas Solovey.
• Updated Brazilian Portuguese translation by Adorilson Bezerra.
• Updated Brazilian Portuguese translation by Enrico Nicoletto.
• Updated Brazilian Portuguese translation by Rafael Ferreira.
• Updated Czech translation by Marek Cernocky'.
• Updated Danish translation by Joe Hansen.
• Updated Dutch translation master by Herman van Beem.
• Updated French translation by Bruno Coudoin.
• Updated Galician translation by Goncalo Cordeiro
• Updated German translation by Christian Kirbach.
• Updated Greek translation by Yannis Kaskamanidis.
• Updated Hungarian translation by Gabor Kelemen
• Updated Lithuanian translation by Aurimas Cernius.
• Updated Scottish Gaelic translation by GunChleoc.
• Updated Serbian translation by МироCлaв Николић.
• Updated Spanish translation by Daniel Mustieles.
• Updated Spanish translation by Milagros Alessandra Infante Montero.
• Updated Spanish translation by Rafael Ferreira
• Updated russian word list by Mayya Sharipova.
• Updated word list for gd by GunChleoc.
• Updated English voice by Philip Morris and Julia Wycherley

What is new in version 13.11:

• Major features:
• A new activity in the reading section that presents a set of image, text and voice to children and an exercise set around them. This includes about 1000 images and voices in English, Spanish, French, and Gaelic-Scottish. The images and voices come from the Art4Apps project, a big thanks to them for providing a such useful resource (under CC BY-SA). If you want to thanks Art4Apps for their hard work please consider making a donation on their site.
• If you want to have a look at what this new activity is about, you can play it online.
• A rework of many text related activities to support multigraph languages. This is driven by a team of Gaelic-Scottish users.
• Added the font face use in GCompris in the skin configuration file. It is possible to select another font by manually changing it with one installed on your system. For example, In boards/skin/babytoy/skin.xml find the line "font id="gcompris/fontface" name="sans" and replace "sans" by "ruluko". Ruluko is a font provided by Google under the SIL Open Font License 1.1 designated to aid those learning to read. In the future selecting the font should be made available at the configuration level.
• Bug fixes:
• By popular demand, there is now a simplified version of the submarine activity, now there is an easy first level. Added tooltips to explain items.
• Fixed a crash case after leaving intro and land_safe activity.
• New country map of Scotland by Foram na Gaidhlig.
• Fixed colors values in the advanced color activity. This page reports the old and new value.
• Added support for remembering last passed level by Roopesh Shenoy. With this option when the children enters an activity the last succeeded level is proposed.
• Added Central America and Oceania geography map by GunChleoc
• Independent wordlist for reading activities by GunChleoc
• Now the intro voice is played when help is clicked.
• Fixed a bug which makes the administration menu missing
• Translations:
• Updated Brazilian Portuguese, Breton, Czech, Danish, French, Galician, German, Greek, Hungarian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Polish, Russian, Scottish Gaelic, Serbian, Serbian Latin, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Tamil.

What is new in version 9.5:

• Major changes:
• Fixed level 8 of babyshapes. The makefile was missing all the images for this level. I reworked the files so that they lie in the resource directory instead of subdirectories.
• New hangman activity. Icon is a a modified one from Mathieu's icon set. The cute background is based on a drawing Franck Doucet made for our bargame activity. This activity uses our default-.xml files to propose words to the children. It is thus very important now to have them properly filled. For now I did the work for English and French. Translators, please refer to this page for instructions: http://gcompris.net/wiki/Translation_addons
• Added details activity by Marc Levivier. In the spirit of famous painting discovery, in this activity the painting is complete and the children must put painting parts on the right places.
• New feature in the chat activity. The user has a shared white boards now. This has been developped by Fionn Ziegler.
• First release of an in progress tool that converts wiktionary xml dumps in an xml file. For now, it works only for French, this page tracks the progress: http://gcompris.net/wiki/Wiktionary_to_XML The idea behind this is to get an xml formatted dictionnary to create new activities in the reading / writing area. For now this is just not used in GCompris.
• In planegame now the numbers are spoken when the plane hit the correct cloud.
• Added missing configuration button in several activites where it makes sense. Now teachers / children can set force uppercase in click on letter, falling wards, falling letter, horizontal/vertical reading. Thanks to Luciana from sleducacional.org
• Added missing level for photohunter by Marc Levivier
• Added the option --disable-level. Some teacher want to be sure the children don't skip a level.
• Now the click on letter activity can be played also with the keybord. This has been suggested by Sini Ruohomaa.
• Fixed reference to tuxpaint dataset. Now we display saved tuxpaint images in our image selector again. Thanks to the person in Latinoware 2010 who reported me that this feature has been lost.
• The configuration of the 'missing letter' activity was not working for UTF-8 multibyte characters (https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=633978) Added a tooltip to better explain the different fields.
• Refined the sudoku's level for scholl usage (By Sylvain Dechy).
• Changed the difficulty level of the maze activity to make it more usable in classrooms. (By Sylvain Dechy)
• Minor fixes:
• Fixed activity 'double entry' for level 3. References to voices were wrong, this level was not playable.
• Fixed bug in which some buttons are no more displayed like in the help and the ok buttons in the dialogs (happens on Ubuntu 10.10) No more use my autocrop feature in goocanvas. It no more works for an unknown reason but it is not very useful, we can live without it. I ported GCompris to no more use it.
• Added the command line option --nocursor (-C). As its name implies, GCompris won't show any visible cursor. This is very useful to touch screen users.
• Added missing words list for Ukranian, Esperanto and Hebrew. There were not properly packaged (they need to be completed anyway).
• Now hide the bar in shapegame activities when the focus is on the ok button we now show the title and info items. This let the children have a complete view of the painting.
• Fixed gc_file_find_absolute() to better parse long and short locale. Now a 3 letter locale like 'ast' is supported. Added support for locale Fixed a startup issue. Our gc_file_find_absolute() was without '.'.
• A few fixes to better manage locale especially in click_on_letter to properly display the locale to search if its not a 2 letter prefix like for asturian (locale=ast).
• Replaced paintings considered not children proof by new one (By Marc Levivier).
• Minor changes:
• Added -O2 flag instead of debug in our compilation chain by default. Without it we crashes on macosx EXC_ARITHMETIC in a g_malloc in sound init.
• Removed the flying plane in the about dialog. This removes the need for an extra .png of our logo. Now we have our logo in the main window when we start it.
• Integrated the gcompris and fsf logo in our skin.svg file Modified the code to use the logo from there.
• Avoid compilation issue in debug mode in gnuchess.
• Added basic instructions to compile GCompris on MacOSX.
• Updated translation instructions for our word list xml files.
• Fixed activation code. Was broken on windows.
• Allow deprecated flag for gtk and gdk to compile again against gtk 2.22
• Added an explicit sound_close when we exit. The patch comes from debian.
• Added a toolitp in superbrain activity to make it easy to understand what a white or black square means.
• Added the method gcompris.get_random_word(wordlist, level) on the python side.
• Fixed references to african country for the voices to no more have them in a separate directory.
• Added author information for each paintings by Marc Levivier.
• Added the info tag in shape based activity. An info tag is exactly the same as a title tag except that is is displayed only when the level is completed and the mouse enters the OK button.
• Improved documentation of the sound API documentation (python doc)
• Support GNUCHESS environment variable Will be useful in 0install environment when GnuChess is installed from 0install feed.
• Support GNUCAP environment variable Will be useful in 0install environment when GnuCap is installed from 0install feed.
• Fix sqlite-less build by Aleksey Lim
• Fixes bug#619433 in the chess game, we no more display the turn at game end.
• Removed the help button in the administration where we don't have help.
• Improved our shape based activities so that titles entries are raised when the focus enters the OK button. It allows the children to see the name of the painting even if it is displayed under it.
• Improved the python template activity to have an hello world. For info, this page explains how to add an activity: http://gcompris.net/wiki/Adding_an_activity
• Created a new script utility named createit.sh. It creates a new empty activity with the given name (only python activity).
• Pass NULL as last goo_canvas_image_new's argument. May be fixes some crashes.
• Fixed es.po, no more translate keywords in es.po
• In shapegame activities, now the xml format does accept 'targetfile=""' to remove the red dot.
• Added the number of activities in the main menu view.
• No more check for pysqlite2 unless installed python is 2.4
• Fixed status bar call crashing in command line mode like for gcompris -l list.
• README.translators updated to reflect new file organisation.
• Added a message in GCompris itself when we fail to load the skin. Before, when the skin file was not found, which means GCompris is not properly installed or configured, there was an assert and nothing was explained to the user. Now there is a message in the GCompris window.
• Now the 'createit.sh ' script used to create a new activity no more requires you to run make. You can just test your activity by calling it with 'runit.sh '
• Now the text color is black in the memory cards. In white it was hard to read.
• Remade the background image of ball catch, paraglider, helicopter.
• Voices:
• New voice set for Slovenian by Sasa Batistic
• Translations:
• Alan Monfort (br)
• Aleksey Lim (es)
• Andrej Znidarsic (sl)
• Bruno Brouard (fr)
• Christian Kirbach (de)
• Fran Dieguez (gl)
• Frederico Goncalves Guimaraes (pt_BR)
• Gabor Kelemen (hu)
• Giannis Kaskamanidis (el)
• Goncalo Cordeiro (gl)
• Inaki Larranaga Murgoitio (eu)
• Joe Hansen (da)
• Jorge Gonzalez (es)
• Karl Ove Hufthammer (nn)
• Mantas Kriauciunas (lt)
• Marek Cernocky' (cs)
• Mario Blattermann (de)
• Petr Kovar (cs)
• Reuma Mordechai (he)
• Xandru Armesto (ast)
• Yannis Kaskamanidis (el)

What is new in version 9.3:

• Fixed superbrain. In some case the proposed solution was wrong. This is a long lasting bug.
• Added support for MacOSX 10.4 Intel.
• Updated icons to reflect latest art work.
• Removed flags from GCompris. Flags create political issue. There is not always a clear relationship between a country flag and a language.
• Fixed a typo in sudoku tutorial.
• Improved graphism new skins babytoy.
• Improved many graphism (connect4, ballcatch).
• Added a copy of gnome-gnuchess internally since the regular gnuchess crashes on macosx. This is activated only on MacOSX.
• Fixed missing translation request for the "Yes I Saw it" string in the reading activity.
• Workaround for the fullscreen mode on macosx. Now set a huge max ratio hint when fullscreen is set.
• Added an ongoing progress status at GCompris startup. This is used to avoid the long delay at startup without user feedback.
• Fixed the audio tooltip in the bar.
• Fixed a segfault in the GCompris dialogue box.
• New activity lights off. Added more simple levels in lightsoff.
• More art work content for photohunter activity.
• Improved wordsgame activity to support language selection.
• Fixed score counting in advanced colour
• Now we give 4 chances at each sublevel. After that the sublevel restarts.
• Fixed redraw activity, several level was impossible to complete. There was many colours in the image target that was impossible to do.
• Fixed SDL audio backend to allow playing with effects and no background music.
• Fixed USA map due to missing Rhode Island.
• New and updated translations

What is new in version 9.2:

• New feature:
• Created a new U.S.A map for our geography activity
• Completed the Windows port. Now use the cute GCompris cursor. Fixed SDL audio back-end
• Fixed bugs:
• Fixed geography activities. Many dot where missing, hidden by the background.
• Fixed drawn case in the chess activity, it was ending in an infinite loop.
• Improved a little bit the layout in the penalty activity.
• Replaced the yellow by white the text color of the score.
• Now the text dialog is centered in the height.
• Added an API entry to get the current cursor. This allow the help dialog to get the previous cursor, set the default one and change again to the caller one in the end.
• In erase activity, the sponge cursor is setback when exiting the pause state. This allow the about box to set the default cursor which is more suitable.
• In the menu, the display of the description is now centered. Minor change, better layout.
• In python, now import sqlite3 instead of pysqlite2 For backyard compatibility, there is a fall back to sill import pysqlite2.
• Added a missing background to the simple color activity It is based on the artwork of Mathieu Ignacio (from the target activity.)
• Fixed algebra activity to report the level properly.
• Better error checking in case the database cannot be loaded or created. Before that patch, a failure was exiting the startup sequence without warning the user Now, in case we cannot load the database of cannot created it we follow the procedure : rename the database under the name gcompris_db.broken recreate it from scratch we failed again, fall back in no database mode.
• Translation:
• Updated Arabic translation by Khaled Hosny
• Updated Greek translation by Yannis Kaskamanidis
• Updated Greek translation by Yannis Kaskamanidis
• Updated Hungarian translation updated by Gabor Kelemen
• Updated Brazilian Portuguese translation by Frederico Goncalves Guimaraes
• Updated Russian translation by Андрей Черепaнов
• Updated Swedish translation by Daniel Nylander

What is new in version 9.1:

• Core fixes:
• Added support of Sugar look&feel by Aleksey Lim
• Now the group menus are ordered based on an embedded difficulty level so that they appear in the same order.
• Fixes to compile with GTK 2.19 by Johan Cwiklinski
• Removed unused import rsvg in watercycle and penalty. PACKAGERS: This mean we no more need on python-rsvg.
• Activity fixes:
• scale Added a sign on the scale The scale activity is sometimes annoying because you cannot easiliy see which side the scale goes. I added a sign < > or = on it to ease the task.
• photo hunter Major rework of he photo hunter activity that can now detect the image difference automagically. This makes it easy to contribute new data set to this activity, just provide it 2 images having some differences. BTW, I added some more content to it. Photo hunter has been fixed to work in full screen and now has an explanation string when started
• erase Fixed events on the canvas that where not taken in account. Now clicking beside the fish does speed them like it was before.
• reversecount Fixed reversecount, it was not restarting on loose case. Now when the children loose he restarts the same level.
• follow line Adapted the follow line to work on touch screen. This was reported by Ronny Standtke. Now not only the motion events are catched but also click events.
• animation activity Added tooltip in the animation activity.
• smallnumber Fixed a crash case in smallnumber activity. This has also been improved to avoid overlaps of dices. Fixed smallnumber2 activity regarding dice pair not close enough.
• electricity Fixed electricity activity, image was referenced badly.
• geography Added translation on tooltips in the geography activity.
• missingletter Fixed missingletter crash uppon changing its locale.
• erase double click Reintroduced the erase double click activity.
• memory word number Fixed memory word number activity. It was broken related to translations.
• smallnumber No more display the sublevel 11/10.
• ball catch Added the manual in the first start of ballcatch.
• traffic Simplified level for traffic. A contribution from a French teacher Sylvain Dechy who teaches in Herimoncourt. This introduces a set of simplified level in the traffic activity best suited for children.
• tuxpaint Fixed tuxpaint activity. Was completely broken.
• memory sound Now in memory_sound activity the intro is heard.
• melody Added an OK button to start the melody activity. This avoids the intro voice to be skipped.
• Translation updates:
• Updated Ukrainian translation by Ivan Onyshchuk
• Updated French translation by Bruno Coudoin
• Updated Hungarian translation by Gabor Kelemen
• Updated Czech translation by Marek Cernocky'
• Updated Simplified Chinese translation by Ray Wang
• Updated Arabic translation by Khaled Hosny
• Updated Afrikaans translation by Friedel Wolff
• Updated Portuguese translation by Duarte Loreto
• Updated Czech translation by Marek Cernocky
• Updated Bulgarian translation by Alexander Shopov
• Updated Brazilian Portuguese by Frederico Goncalves Guimaraes
• Voice pack:
• Several voices where not played due to name mismatch
• Added a new voice set by for Chinese by Feng Jie.

What is new in version 8.4.12:

• Fixed a crash case by Miguel in the configuration. In a language setting configuration of an activity if we change the language, GCompris crashes.
• Fixed an annoying bug in the locale selection. Punjabi was twice in our internal list which makes it impossible to access locale after Portuguese in our list. It was possible to access locale by going backward but really annoying.
• Recompiled gnuchess on windows with the link option-mwindows to avoid the black dos windows being displayed when you start the chess game.
• Replaced letter that differentiate blocks for color blinds by ASCII symbols that are locale agnostic.
• Fixed melody activity, some sound files was not correct which made it sometimes impossible to complete.
• Fixed a little issue. It was possible for the user in memory sound against tux to click on as many card she wants if she does not wait for the end of the sound.
• Fixed a cased in which the memory sound was in a fuzzy state if the level was changed by the user.
• Translation Updates:
• es.po Spanish by Jorge Gonzalez
• nn.po Norwegian Nynorsk by Karl Ove Hufthammer
• eu.po Basque by Inaki Larranaga Murgoitio
• pt.po Portuguese by Antonio Lima