I think there's too much arguing for things that kids don't give a shit about. The argument can't be, "think about the children!"
The argument must be, "preserve the children's rights to think for themselves." It is on us as adults - parents, teachers, trusted elders, whatever - to instill in the kids the information needed to make decisions, and the fundamental skills to objectively utilize that information in a rational decision making process. In my humble opinion - reflected in my own choices as a parent - that means Linux (a term I use in its colloquial form, please do not nit pick on that word) on the Pi. My kids see Windows at school and at friends' homes, OS X and iOS at home, and as of today I'm taking my RPi off duty and showing it to my kids. It's a snow day, they're a captive audience!
It isn't about a six year old compiling a new kernel or a teen getting a Minecraft server to run a mod, it's about creating a spirit of curiosity and experimentation.
And nothing kills curiosity more than NT system calls that are undebuggable and the bureaucracy around setting up a .net development environment or even worse trying to use any other language on Windows than the .net stuff.
And how, exactly, will a child be faced with debugging NT internals while making a game in Scratch?
The educators that want to foster an interest in computing will do so in a way that's least burdensome to a child's limited attention span and desire for instant gratification. Those that want to foster an interest in writing software simply won't put Windows on the thing unless they're teaching it.
The argument must be, "preserve the children's rights to think for themselves." It is on us as adults - parents, teachers, trusted elders, whatever - to instill in the kids the information needed to make decisions, and the fundamental skills to objectively utilize that information in a rational decision making process. In my humble opinion - reflected in my own choices as a parent - that means Linux (a term I use in its colloquial form, please do not nit pick on that word) on the Pi. My kids see Windows at school and at friends' homes, OS X and iOS at home, and as of today I'm taking my RPi off duty and showing it to my kids. It's a snow day, they're a captive audience!
It isn't about a six year old compiling a new kernel or a teen getting a Minecraft server to run a mod, it's about creating a spirit of curiosity and experimentation.