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Linux for Kids? (yall.theatl.social)
submitted 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) by wesley@yall.theatl.social to c/linux@lemmy.ml
 

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.

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[–] MentalEdge@sopuli.xyz 42 points 6 months ago

Fedora apparently has some functionality.

There is also an arch wiki page on the subject.

Linux systems are used all over for enterprise use cases, which means there is a robust user permission system. Usage won't be Googleable with stuff like "parental control" but more likely keywords like "user restriction".

Not sure if you mention your wife because she knows Linux and thinks it's a bad idea, or because doesn't know Linux, and still thinks it's a bad idea.

Of course, when your kid one day learns to flash an iso onto a usb, and install an OS, any and all parental control will be symbolic. Hopefully you've successfully taught your kid how to use tech safely by then.

You'll want to look into browser extensions and blocking websites on your router, as well.

[–] Atomic@sh.itjust.works 37 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Any normal distro. Kids learn fast. No one taught me how to use Windows 95, or XP. We figured it out.

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[–] leavemealone@sh.itjust.works 34 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (3 children)

Oh I looked into it recently and discovered endless os, it has from scratch parental controls, an offline encyclopedia/Wikipedia lite an other educative softwares and games. You can use it totally offline as it seems to be made for educative purpose. Check it it could be interesting for your purpose. (You can also download and install more stuff for it of course)

https://www.endlessos.org/

It's freeware of course. Their installer took ages to download, there are torrents of their full version (12Gb)

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[–] surfrock66@lemmy.world 29 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (6 children)

I built my kids potato computers from the time they were 3-5, which was during covid. They need computer skills nowadays, and it put them at an advantage for covid school. We got them on java Minecraft which was huge for reading, typing, and some basic math skills (they figured out multiplication for crafting things like doors). I made a chart which had icons of things they want, with the word next to it, so they could search and type in creative.

We used Ubuntu Mate. It's simple, stable, and familiar. They do NOT have sudo on these boxes. As we've advanced, they now have firefox (behind a pihole which upstreams to opendns' family protect), gimp (with a wacom tablet!), inkscape, calculators, tenacity, libre office, and they're starting to get into some cad to make things to 3d print. You have to come to terms with doing a LOT of patient hand holding, but it has paid off dividends.

[–] wesley@yall.theatl.social 9 points 6 months ago (2 children)

Thanks for the advice. Yes I absolutely want her to have the opportunity to learn more technical stuff and be able to explore and play games. Also lan parties for games.

I just want some guard rails because we have issues with managing screentime and things like that.

[–] surfrock66@lemmy.world 9 points 6 months ago

My setup is a bit extreme, but here are my guardrails:

  1. All users have the same UID's on every system. I'm 1000, wife is 1001, son is 1002, daughter is 1003. All these exist on all systems. Our primary group is "family" (gid 10000). Our files are all owned by user:family. This matters because we let them have access to the share of things like home movies and pictures, and I have a TrueNAS with an NFS mount that their user folders rsync to nightly for backup. If you wanna get crazy, you can put in a whole LDAP/freeIPA setup, but that's a lot (and I did all that as a learning experience).
  2. They don't have the account passwords. I have their password, and if they want to use it, the wife or I have to type the password. When we want them off, superkey+L to lock the computer, and if they reboot it comes to a login screen.
  3. If you really go this route, and go the whole LDAP thing, you can also tie that into apps like Jellyfin. I have a huge library of movies and shows, but there's a folder called "KidMedia" and I literally manually symlink things to that folder if I want them to have access. I set up the phones/tablet with their own jellyfin accounts, and when they log in they only see their media. I also NFS mount that share, so for the same reason, they can watch stuff on VLC from the computer with access control. We also do that with nextcloud, so we can use nextcloud talk to chat internally. The tablets/phones have built in android controls, so the idea is once they're on their device, they're free within the ecosystem I set up and they don't enter credentials other than device unlock.
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[–] BaalInvoker@lemmy.eco.br 27 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Gnome itself is embedded with parental control and you can enable it while adding a new user

I don't know how other DEs deal with it, but I think all of them has something similar, tho

Edit: also may be a good idea set a AdGuard to set a DNS block for some origins... AdGuard gives you the capability to block several apps and you can customize blocks as well

[–] atzanteol@sh.itjust.works 27 points 6 months ago (6 children)

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.

[–] wesley@yall.theatl.social 22 points 6 months ago (3 children)

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

[–] Stillhart@lemm.ee 15 points 6 months ago (3 children)

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)

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[–] HumanPerson@sh.itjust.works 25 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I would give them full on Linux, just put parental controls on the router.

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[–] bjoern_tantau@swg-empire.de 23 points 6 months ago (1 children)

My kids, 9 and 11, use OpenSUSE Tumbleweed. Mainly because that's what I use. They were with me when I set it up to choose a name for the computer, a username and a password (for their user and for the disc encryption).

I showed them how to configure wobbly windows (most important part) and how to use Discover to install games.

I installed Minecraft. I installed Steam (which has its own parental controls). I configured emails, Nextcloud and a password manager. I configured automatic updates.

I think that's about it.

They're responsible. They ask me for help if they need some. We educate them about people they meet online in Minecraft and other games. Works well so far.

[–] jjlinux@lemmy.ml 8 points 6 months ago

We're on the same boat. My kids only know Linux, and I just got my wife on Fedora about 5 days ago.

My 9 years old is on Zorin (his choice) 658-3330 on his PC, BUT and my 10 years old daughter is on PopOS on her PC and Nobara on her laptop (also her choice).

I have full control of the network with a PFSense full of VLANs, Adguard Home and some other goodies, and my wife and I have all the credentials to our kid's accounts and devices.

Any distro they feel comfortable with will do, as long as you can manage it.

[–] kmacmartin@lemmy.ca 18 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I got my daughter a surface book with Archlinux on it when she turned four. She'd previously been using an ipad so I wanted something that had a touchscreen, and I installed KDE as the desktop. She learned how to use it extremely quickly, and has even started in on the commandline now that she's 5 and knows how to read. GCompris is great too.

Me and my wife haven't bothered with parental controls and instead just keep an eye on her usage, but I agree with other commenters that controlling things at the router level seems like a better bet.

[–] nutsack@lemmy.world 16 points 6 months ago (4 children)

that's the most r/linux thing ive ever heard

[–] Luckyfriend222@lemmy.world 8 points 6 months ago

She uses Arch btw

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[–] olafurp@lemmy.world 17 points 6 months ago (1 children)

What do you think Hannah Montana Linux is for?

[–] femboy_bird@lemmy.blahaj.zone 16 points 6 months ago

Give em linux mint, and set parental controls on the router, alternatively you can have an admin account which has a list of blacklisted ips, but i don't really recommend that since you'll never have a list that has everything, and if your kid wants to look at porn or whatever, they'll find a website that isn't blocked, also doing this probably means you won't be able to put your kid in wheel group which imo means they won't be able to learn as much

[–] pukeko@lemm.ee 15 points 6 months ago (3 children)

My kid, believe it or not, uses a NixOS laptop regularly. He doesn't configure it yet, but honestly I'm not afraid of him having a go. When I was just about his age, I was figuring out DOS without the Internet to help, and while it was orders of a magnitude simpler, the documentation was orders of a magnitude more sparse too. Any of the big, well-documented distros (Ubuntu, Debian, NixOS (for some values of well-documented anyway), Fedora) would be fine. Honestly, I'd even let him loose with Arch at this point, or even Linux From Scratch.

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[–] themoken@startrek.website 13 points 6 months ago (3 children)

One thing I'd like to suggest is get most of their forward facing apps as Flatpak and let them install software that way instead of using the system package manager (even if it has a GUI). This jibes with others suggesting an immutable base system.

Obviously this may be more of a concern for older kids, but my kid started with Linux and it did fine... Right up until Discord started breaking because it was too old and they didn't want to tangle with the terminal. Same thing when Minecraft started updating Java versions. Discord and Prismlauncher from Flatpak (along with Proton and Steam now) would have kept them happier with Linux.

As for internet, routers come with parental controls these days too, which have the added advantage of being able to cover phones (at least while not on mobile data). Setting the Internet to be unavailable for certain devices after a certain time on school nights may be a more straightforward route than DE tools.

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[–] boredsquirrel@slrpnk.net 12 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Fedora Kinoite or Silverblue as base. They are so stable, very nice to know they will not break. You may want universal blue.

GNOME has some form of parental control too but no idea. I would trust it way more than ElementaryOS, as it is one of the 2 main Linux Desktops.

GNOME is also stupid simple to use.

It may break KDE apps themes, and KDE has tons of nice learning apps. But this also goes for all other desktops I think?

Education:

Educational Games:

Random harmless games

Easy tools for learning stuff

[–] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 11 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (2 children)

Could you block things at the network level?

Fun fact much of knowledge about active directory and security comes from misusing school resources. (More specifically bypassing restrictions)

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[–] 520@kbin.social 10 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (2 children)

Standard Ubuntu should have you covered.

One word of warning though, don't be too egregious with the parental controls. If your kids are motivated enough, they will find a way around it.

Education really is your best weapon here. Tell them about the dangers of the modern web and computing.

[–] TimeSquirrel@kbin.social 10 points 6 months ago (1 children)

If your kids are motivated enough, they will find a way around it.

Reminds me of my local public library in 1997. They had these public computers for people that didn't yet have Internet access, and the browsers were locked down and stripped with just "back", "forward", "refresh" buttons and a URL address bar.

However, there was a tiny question mark icon in the corner that when clicked, brought up the Windows help system (that browser thing that can navigate help topics). There was a link in there to open IE and go to a support page, and when clicked would launch the full Internet Explorer with a complete menu over top of the kiosk interface, and this browser instance was not restricted in what it could access like the kiosk browser was (I believe it may have been a custom version of Mosaic).

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[–] krolden@lemmy.ml 5 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Parents shouldn't teach kids to use snaps

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[–] RootBeerGuy@discuss.tchncs.de 9 points 6 months ago (4 children)

Wouldn't this be a usecase for a immutable distro? Cannot really break it? But haven't used one myself yet so not sure how that holds up.

[–] BaalInvoker@lemmy.eco.br 14 points 6 months ago (5 children)

I bet that a kid with no root access or sudo permission couldn't break any Linux system, immutable or not...

[–] MajorHavoc@programming.dev 10 points 6 months ago

I can confirm. My little ones have been running Linux for years.

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[–] deadcatbounce@reddthat.com 8 points 6 months ago

Don't put parental controls on it. What do you want to control? Maybe put controls on the website that they can visit, but that goes on the DNS or router. Most kids will go to a mate's house that doesn't have any or as harsh parental controls anyway if they are particularly keen on seeing something that they 'shouldn't'. Parental controls are a fix for parents who can't talk to their kids; they make the parents feel safer but just send the issues underground. Gen X will have been writing code for a while at your child's age. I was. There was no choice if you needed to unlock a game you could've afford. At that time GUIs were a bad overlay over MS-DOS or DR-DOS. You had to know what you were doing to get the best out of it. Your kid will be fine with any distribution of Linux. If your kid is technically inquisitive likely to be good at maths/science, get them installing Arch. If not and they just want to use a browser, install one of the top five popular distributions from distrowatch.com. The Office suite for Linux is called LibreOffice. If you use Chrome as your browser you'll easily tell if your child has been on bad sites because your timeline will be filled with adverts for unsavoury impotence remedies. Enjoy.

PS printers are still bastards in Linux. Happily they're less bastardish in Linux (and Mac, because Linux and iOS use the same printing software) than Windows. If you like your life buy a decent Laser from anyone but HP - my generation bought the last decent HP printers they made.

[–] jdubba@lemmy.world 8 points 6 months ago

My six year old daughter's laptop died recently and I replaced it with a small micro PC. I burned isos of 7 or 8 mainstream distro live images on to USB sticks, then let her spend 2 or 3 hours on each of them over a few days, and let her pick her favorite. I even let her use the pre installed Win 11 OS to compare. Fortunately she hated it. She ended up picking KDE Neon, but also liked Pop!OS and Mint Xfce. I think getting to explore around and make her own decisions in the process helped bond her with the computer and the OS in a deeper way than if I had just stuffed something on there.

[–] smileyhead@discuss.tchncs.de 7 points 6 months ago

Don't overthink this, it's a kid. She/He would not be yet biased like you or your surroundings. About wife - I don't she would be against teaching kid how a computer works, maybe you explained it so she heard "hey can our kid spend more time in front of a screen and with my geeky thing" :D.

I have a little smart sister (now 9 yo) that use Linux, it started with her making a mess on Windows login (parents laptop) so I asked if she wants "her own space", but instead of new account I installed whole Fedora on second partition. Why Fedora? Because It works and looks nice, there really is no need for "educational", just install education programs on top.
There are basic parental controls in vanilla Fedora, but honestly there turned out to not be needed, she don't hook too much after first shock of tech and like two cries she learned to stop when we say to stop, at least most of the time. Depends on the child, I suppose some really need a timer, that's up go you, nothing bad with that. I have showed her some games too, she loves everything Tux. I teach her how computer works this way, showing more and more programs with time and every new icon of Krita, GCompris, Goxel or Scratch is new great thing. She has Windows at school, but everything works on her space too. Well almost, LibreOffice does not has 'online cliparts', so instead of arguing with 9 year old I told that program at she uses at school is not available on this OS (after a while of teaching she knows OS is something something wow the desktop looks like :D) and showed how to download search copy from the browser. With being honest and just responding on every little childlish curiosity question she already knows more about computers than her mother. I just made it normal for her, as after using Linux for years it is normal for me.

[–] MajorHavoc@programming.dev 6 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (2 children)

Basically any mainstream Linux distro is easy enough for a child, today.

For kids who can read tell them to press that 'Windows' key, and start typing what they're looking for.

For younger kids, place appropriate icons on their desktop.

I do my parental controls at the network level (PiHole, etc), so I haven't looked much into parental controls on the Linux host, itself.

I have started to favor PopOS, because it is familiar, because it looks a lot like SteamOs, what their SteamDeck runs, when they reboot into desktop mode, in order to mod their Minecraft.

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[–] joewilliams007@kbin.melroy.org 6 points 6 months ago (2 children)

dont use parental controls. Its fake, doesnt make sense, and limits learn oportunities. Any Linux works out. Linux Mint works great

[–] fl42v@lemmy.ml 10 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Bypassing parental control is a great learning opportunity, tho :D

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[–] TimeSquirrel@kbin.social 10 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (5 children)

dont use parental controls

That's how you get your kid to encounter MLP porn. Or worse, discover Gab and 4chan.

[–] vzq@lemmy.blahaj.zone 9 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (2 children)

And then you’d have to talk to them about it. Can you imagine the horror!

[–] TimeSquirrel@kbin.social 14 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Who said I'd never talk to them about it? I'd just like to do it in a controlled manner at an appropriate age and prepare them without them seeing the most depraved shit right off the bat. Is that unreasonable?

Don't assume the intentions of other people.

[–] Jennykichu@lemmy.dbzer0.com 12 points 6 months ago

I know your intentions are good but if my kid stumbled across gore or animal abuse they're going to require a level of "talking to" that is waaay beyond my skill level, and a content blocker is a lot cheaper than a child psychologist.

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[–] anarchy_artichokey@lemmy.ml 6 points 6 months ago (4 children)

ElementaryOS comes with parental controls iirc

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[–] Moxvallix@sopuli.xyz 6 points 6 months ago

My dad got me a Linux laptop as a kid (I was 10 I think?), and I am so grateful that he did.

To be fair, I already had a huge passion for computing, and it meant that I would constantly toy around with Linux, breaking things and learning how to fix them.

I have been a Linux user ever since, and I feel have learnt so much about computing because of it.

(I started on Ubuntu 12.04, with the glorious Unity desktop)

[–] kylian0087@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Arch linux? :) joke aside perhaps something with btrfs support is handy. you can easily rollback if something breaks. For parental control don't give the kid sudo/root. other then that restricting websites and stuff is more easily done on a firewall outside of the kid its control.

Almost any of the larger distros will suffice i think. Personally a fan of opensuse tumbleweed which has btrfs support out of the box. use a DE like kde/gnome and i think you have a very solid start

[–] tkk13909@sopuli.xyz 6 points 6 months ago (1 children)

If I may ask, why is your wife not a fan of the idea?

[–] wesley@yall.theatl.social 5 points 6 months ago (2 children)

I think it was mostly the parental controls we aren't familiar with on Linux and I think she thinks it would be too "hard" for her.

I don't agree obviously

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[–] john89@lemmy.ca 5 points 6 months ago

I'd probably give them Linux Mint.

[–] nirogu@social.vivaldi.net 5 points 6 months ago (1 children)

If the child is really young, check out the sugar desktop environment. There is an official distro from sugarlabs and there is also a fedora spin (fedora soas)
If the computer should be a little more functional, the GNOME desktop or the Deepin desktop are good options imo

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