GCompris is a free Windows program from the GCompris team, built for children aged 2 to 10. Parents and teachers will find activities in arithmetic, science, reading, keyboard and mouse practice, plus classics such as memory, sudoku and tic tac toe. Here it sits in puzzle games with an education tag. The installer is fetched from the official KDE server, download.kde.org.
A suite of activities, not a single game
What defines GCompris is its breadth. It is a collection of educational activities for children, grouped by subject, and it is a high quality suite. The licence is AGPL-3.0 and the app is free.
The developer lists six groups. Computer discovery covers the keyboard, mouse and mouse gestures. Arithmetic includes table memory, enumeration, mirror image, balance the scale and change giving.
What a session looks like, from the canal lock to sudoku
A child picks an activity from a category and plays a short task. Science activities include the canal lock, color mixing and the gravity concept. Games include memory, connect 4, tic tac toe, sudoku and the Tower of Hanoi.
There is also reading practice, plus a few unusual ones: learning to tell time, the braille system, a maze and music instruments. Check difficulty levels and progress tracking after installing. The package is 68.7 MB, version 26.2.
How it differs from kmahjongg, FreeCellOK and the other listed alternatives
Alternatives include kmahjongg, MineSweeperOK, FreeCellOK, puzzletea and TETR.IO. Those names point to single puzzle or arcade titles, while GCompris spans many subjects for young children. The difference here rests on scope.
For an adult who wants one puzzle to play repeatedly, a dedicated title may fit better. For a child in the 2 to 10 range, the range of subjects is the reason to try GCompris.
What's new in 26.2
Version 26.2 contains bug fixes and improvements on many activities. It is fully translated in 27 languages, including Arabic, French, Spanish and Ukrainian.
GCompris Educational Software pros and cons
Pros
- Free, with AGPL-3.0 licensing
- Activities for ages 2 to 10 across arithmetic, science, reading and logic games
- Includes unusual topics such as braille and telling time
- Fully translated in many languages, with more partly translated
- Distributed from the KDE download server
Cons
- Difficulty levels and progress tracking need checking after install
- The package is 68.7 MB
- Difficulty levels and progress tracking are unconfirmed
- Several languages are only partly translated, such as Macedonian at 81%
Is GCompris Educational Software safe?
The installer for version 26.2 comes straight from download.kde.org, the official KDE server, and the developer's site is kde.org. The software is released under AGPL-3.0 and costs nothing. No scan results are provided with this page, so check the file as you would any installer before running it.
How to install GCompris Educational Software
- Press the download button to get the official file.
- Run the installer you saved and confirm the Windows security prompt if the publisher matches.
- Follow the setup steps, then start GCompris Educational Software from the Start menu.
