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.
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.