I’m thinking about building a desktop with one of my kids and I would really prefer to put Linux on it. My wife is not a fan of the idea, however.
I’m wondering are there any good Linux distros/utilities for children that include parental control features and things like that? And that are easy to use for a child who has only used basic Chromebooks in the past?
For reference the child is under 12.
I abhor the idea of things made “for kids”. I learned to program when I was 10 on a Commodore 64. And we would wear an onion on our belt which was the style at the time… Sorry, where was I?
I’d just install a normal distro. Let the kiddo break shit and learn to fix it. Keep backups for recovery and probably isolate the system on your network for if/when kiddo does something stupid. Talk about security, being responsible, etc. We learn through mistakes not by playing in safe walled-gardens.
I appreciate your input, I was also teaching myself to code by the time I was in middle school, but this is a different situation and some guard rails are needed to manage screen time and app usage, etc.
I’m not so much worried about her wrecking the computer and more about her wrecking her brain with unfettered access to the Internet
Personally, I’d use the router to limit access to locations and times. It’s more reliable, easier to do, and lets you be less picky with your distro.
Using a DNS level content blocker like Adblock DNS is a great option, IMHO, and is super easy to setup.
(For the record, parent of 8 and 11 yr olds)
Which isn’t a bad idea, but I’d still want some kind of parental controls like Android has to limit screen time. I don’t need Netflix.com to be all or nothing, but I certainly don’t want it to be four hours a day either.
Having your router limit internet connectivity time is effectively the same thing these days. There are some things they can do offline but not much anymore.
That’s exactly right. My kids’ VLAN goes down at 8pm every night, and they are aware of it. So much so that they usually just shut down at around 7:30pm and start asking for dinner.
Evidently, I audit their network usage regularly and if I find anything concerning, I sit down with them and my wife and talk about it (have found 1 instance in which my boy was looking for pirated games for Linux, and my daughter was looking for “pranks for school and how not to get caught” 🤣).
All in all, I think we nerds have an easier shot at parenting than most people.
Does it need to be connected to the internet? At that age, I think you could get away with installing stuff locally that they could play with.
IMO you should create guard rails that you intend her to eventually understand and circumvent. Nothing is more empowering for a kid interested in tech than thinking they figured out how to get around the guard rails. Just make sure you can detect when it has happened.
Do something locally on the machine to block internet access. Maybe something as simple as turning off the network adapter. One day she’ll either learn enough about the system to remove the guard rails, or she’ll find other interests.
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This was my fathers approach when I was growing up. I was basically allowed to do whatever I wanted offline. But, outside of a small handful of websites (a couple gaming websites maybe), everything online needed his permission. This gave me a really solid understanding of how things worked, troubleshooting, etc, while also not letting me see anything too heinous.
Son, is that you? I had a linux machine setup for my kids with a reverse proxy. I let them have a handful of websites that were whitelisted and they could go directly to. Everything else was off limits unless I ok’ed it and added it to the list. It still boggles my mind at the scoffs I would receive from other parents, and even my spouse at the time.
Hehe well my dirty secret is that I was a Windows XP and MacOS X kid😅 I still have a real soft spot for those systems, especially XP. If I were ever to have kids though, I’d take this approach and introduce them to Linux young.
Totally get that, but we live in a much more dangerous and predatory computer landscape these days. It would be foolish not to take some precautions.
True, but nothing beats out active parenting and communication. Like has been said, you can set up filters all day long (and you should), but the second the kid learns how to install a distro from scratch, they’ll soon have unfettered access the the entire Internet. The only sensible approach is to talk with them about what’s out there, the dangers of it, and how to navigate the internet safely. Also too, browse with them. Spend time with them guiding them on the wonderful parts of the internet, and help them develope good habits on being a good netzien. Eventually they’ll find the seedy parts of the internet, but hopefully by then they’ll be less interested in it because it isn’t taboo, it’s just wrong.
Thanks for bringing up that aspect that is often overlooked in these discussions.
thats how you get hackers