Protecting your machine
One of the biggest problems with traditional paint programs is the user has to be able to navigate the file system to find and update his pictures. For a tiny tot (or your dad, when he comes to visit!), you just don't want to leave the file system open for that inevitable mucking about. To select an existing image, all the little tike need do is select a picture, as shown in Figure C.

FIGURE C

Save and open files by clicking a picture. Click picture for a larger image.

You can force the program to run in full screen, disable printing, and disable the ability for a user to quit, tab out, or otherwise exit the program.

When saving new images, you can force the program to never allow saving over an existing image, thereby making sure your little sweetie never loses any of her work.

We are the world.
If you're not a native English speaker (or reader), Tux Paint is available in a variety of different languages, as shown in Figure D.

FIGURE D

Viva la France! Click picture for a larger image.

But French isn't the only translation. It's got, oh, just a few translations, as shown in Table B.

Afrikaans	Galician	Norwegian Nynorsk
Albanian	Georgian	Polish
American English (default)	German	Portuguese
Arabic	Greek	Romanian
Basque	Gronings	Russian
Brazilian Portuguese	Hebrew	Scottish Gaelic
Breton	Hindi	Serbian
Bulgarian	Hungarian	Slovak
Catalan	Icelandic	Slovenian
Chinese (Simplified)	Indonesian	Spanish
Chinese (Traditional)	Irish Gaelic	Swahili
Croatian	Italian	Swedish
Czech	Japanese	Tamil
Danish	Kinyarwanda	Thai
Dutch	Korean	Tibetan
English (American)	Kurdish	Turkish
English (British)	Lithuanian	Ukrainian
Estonian	Malay	Vietnamese
Finnish	Mexican Spanish	Walloon
Faroese	Norwegian Bokmal	Welsh
Faroese

Conclusion
We're very impressed with Tux Paint. It's simple and easy to use. It's clearly a program designed with kids (and fathers-in-law) in mind, it's flexible, and, of course, it's free. We give Tux Paint four suited Spheniscidae (look it up) out of five.

OUR RATING: 4 of 5

For more than 20 years, David Gewirtz, the author of Where Have All The Emails Gone? and The Flexible Enterprise has analyzed current, historical, and emerging issues relating to technology, competitiveness, and policy. David is the Editor-in-Chief of the ZATZ magazines, is the Cyberterrorism Advisor for the International Association for Counterterrorism and Security Professionals, and can be reached via email at david@zatz.com.