Linux for Kids?

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.

nutsack ,

Every distro is essentially the same it's not the question you want to be asking

Atomic ,

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

leavemealone ,

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)

HumanPerson ,

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

MentalEdge ,
@MentalEdge@sopuli.xyz avatar

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.

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