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.

  • Skull giver@popplesburger.hilciferous.nl
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    6 months ago

    The thing about that is that I’m convinced the computer itself should be completely normal, it’s just internet access that should be monitored (up until a certain age). Take a look at the creepy shit kids posting at r/teenagers have to deal with, or the abuse that goes down in seemingly safe Discord servers.

    If I ever have kids and they want to see what happens when they delete /etc, I’ll encourage them (assuming I took care of backups). Let them mess around with Scratch or C or Javascript or whatever. The software on the computer is the safest part of interacting with a computer these days.

    I agree on just installing some normal distro, but it shouldn’t be left completely unmonitored when it comes to websites. I wish the internet I experienced as a kid was still around, but it isn’t, and that sucks.

    • bigmclargehuge@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      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.

      • FigMcLargeHuge@sh.itjust.works
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        6 months ago

        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.