While you're not wrong, I believe that the effort was made with the intent of supporting everything in-house instead of relying on the community. The UI(KDE) of the Linux Caixa Mágica (Magic Box) was worked on to be user friendly and translated in portuguese as back then everything was still a bit rough around the edges, it was also pretty well documented for parents. I think my first linux was that one, and I learned a lot with it. Unfortunately I can't say the experience was universal, as the lack of teacher training(the education system evolves very slowly) and lack of resources that involved it lead to a complete flop in the classroom environments.