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.

  • atzanteol@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    0·
    2 years ago

    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.socialOPEnglish
      1·
      2 years ago

      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