Binary package hint: gcompris
Fresh install of Kubuntu 8.04 with all updates applied:
I have installed gcompris-8.4.4-1.1ubuntu1 which pulled in the corresponding gcompris-data package. As I wanted to have the sound as well, I've installed gcompris-sound-de, gcompris-sound-en and gcompris-sound-nl as well. The first thing I noticed was that gcompris would insist on using English written text, even when switched to Dutch or German. I then proceeded to install language-support-de, -nl and -en (8.04+20080214), which did not resolve this problem. After some investigation, I found that the corresponding "gcompris.mo" files are not part of the gcompris package, nor are they part of the language packages I installed - they are actually part of the "language-pack-gnome-XX" packages - but these do not get installed automatically on a Kubuntu system. I think this should be fixed, as not having the gcompris.mo files installed severely hampers the usability on a non-English (or multilinugal) system.
Secondly, even after installing all that I found that (at least) one of the reading games still does not work:
"Reading Activities" -> "Click on a letter" - no sound is produced for the letters the user is supposed to click on, making this game unusable (tried in German and Dutch so far).
Additional info:
"Click on a letter" does not work for English (UK), either. I ran strace on gcompris while trying this and found that gcompris does indeed find the correct ogg vorbis file for the welcome message of the game ("/usr/
Playing those files with ogg123 from the command line does work fine.
I also just discovered that while the background music and the initial "Welcome" do work, none of the other sound effects seem to work. For example, "Discovery activities" -> "Sound activities" -> "Melody" and "Discovery activities" -> "Memory activities" -> "Railway" do not work, either. However, "Discovery activities" -> "Memory activities" -> "Audio memory game" works.