GCompris: An Open‑Source Educational Software for Children – Features, History, and Platform Support

When it comes to children’s educational software, many think of the Scratch programming platform, but this article introduces another project—GCompris. Like Scratch, GCompris is open‑source software; more precisely, it is free software as part of the GNU project, previously maintained jointly by the Free Software Foundation and UNESCO, and its code is now hosted and developed by the KDE community.

As a high‑quality children’s education application, GCompris consists of many learning activities that cover a wide range of topics—from basic arithmetic and literacy to history, art, geography, and technology (such as computer use). It targets children aged 2 to 10; although some activities are game‑oriented and emphasize fun, they all retain educational value. The activities have been translated into more than 20 languages, making the suite popular among teachers, parents, and children worldwide.

Unfortunately, these translated languages do not include Simplified Chinese; only Traditional Chinese is supported because the Simplified Chinese translation is below the 80 % completeness threshold that GCompris requires to ensure a good experience for children. Interested contributors can request translation support by contacting [email protected].

Examples of learning activities and themes include:

Computer exploration: keyboard, mouse, touchscreen…

Reading: letters, words, reading exercises, text input…

Arithmetic: numbers, operations, table memory, enumeration, double lists

Science: canal locks, water cycle, renewable energy…

Geography: countries, regions, cultures…

Games: chess, 4‑in‑a‑row, memory game, Hangman, tic‑tac‑toe…

Other: colors, shapes, Braille, time recognition…

On November 19, GCompris celebrated its 20th anniversary and released version 1.0, which added many new activities, including an electrical circuit simulation (allowing users to draw and simulate circuits), addition/subtraction exercises, a children’s keyboard, and a more realistic introduction to gravity, bringing the total to over 150 activities.

GCompris follows the principle of "one success leads to many successes" in designing activities, aiming to encourage children while providing challenges that avoid a sense of threat. Consequently, version 1.0 introduced a feature that lets educators set difficulty levels for each child based on their proficiency.

For example, in a number‑practice activity, parents or teachers can choose which numbers the child learns now and defer higher‑difficulty numbers for later. The practice duration is also customizable, with options ranging from a few minutes to an hour.

GCompris has very low hardware requirements and can run on older computers or low‑power devices such as Raspberry Pi. It supports Windows, Android, GNU/Linux, and macOS, and can be installed on desktops, laptops, tablets, and mobile devices.

Download address: https://gcompris.net/downloads-en.html

In fact, the full version of GCompris has been free on all platforms since the beginning of this year. Previously, to promote free software, only the Linux full version was free; Windows users received a "crippled" version and had to purchase an activation code for the complete suite.