GCompris is an educational software suite comprising of numerous activities for children aged 2 to 10. Some of the activities are game orientated, but nonetheless still educational. Below you can find a list of categories with some of the activities available in that category.

- computer discovery: keyboard, mouse, different mouse gesture, …
- algebra: table memory, enumeration, double entry table, mirror image, …
- science: the canal lock, the water cycle, the submarine, electric simulation …
- geography: place the country on the map
- games: chess, memory, connect 4, oware, sudoku …
- reading: reading practice
- other: learn to tell time, puzzle of famous paintings, vector drawing, …

Currently GCompris offers in excess of 80 activities and more are being developed. GCompris is free software, that means that you can adapt it to your own needs, improve it and, most importantly, share it with children everywhere.

This guide show you how to compile the latest version of Gcompris. If you don't want to compile from the source, please check Synaptic package manager for Gcompris or Getdeb if they have an up-to-date ubuntu package available.

Make sure that the driver to your 3D graphic card is proper installed and working.
Check if your sourcelist is fully enable (universe and multiverse).

Next step is to download Compiling tools and the right libs to make GCompris work. To the terminal;

Code:

sudo aptitude update && sudo aptitude upgrade
sudo aptitude install build-essential pkg-config checkinstall
sudo aptitude install libgdk-pixbuf-dev libgstreamer0.10-dev libxml2-dev libglib2.0-dev libexpat1-dev gettext libxxf86vm-dev gnuchess texi2html libgnet-dev libsqlite3-dev python2.5-dev libsdl1.2-dev libsdl-mixer1.2-dev libgtk2.0-dev libgnomecanvas2-dev python-gnome2-dev python-gnome2-extras

Done.

Download the latest version of GCompris source code to your Desktop;

Download

To the terminal;

Code:

cd ~/Desktop
tar zxfv gcompris-8.4.tar.gz
cd gcompris-8.4
./configure --enable-gnet 
make
sudo checkinstall

You can now launch GCompris by Applications —> Games —> Educational Suite GCompris
or by typing gcompris in the terminal.

Note tha GCompris Adminstration tool can be found in Applications —> Education —> GCompris Adminstration
or by typing gcompris -a –nolockcheck in the terminal.

Enjoy!