Quick Setup

You'll need this post for some of the later subjects.

My low friction suggestion is to start with the Ubuntu "distribution" of Linux.  There are many others, some possibly better for your needs in a few places, but this one is well supported by the community, makes frequent releases, is very popular, and very simple to set up. Click here to download and follow instructions there.  The short version is you'll burn a CD or USB stick, then boot it and answer some prompts (most people can just pick all the defaults) to get a useful system.  If there's interest, we can do a bigger post on it, but it's pretty simple these days.

What I wanted to mention was users.  The Ubuntu installer doesn't give too many details, but the idea is that each user gets their own account, which lets each have their own personal look and feel, personal settings, and private files.

There is also a way for an administrative user to get full access to the machine, including reading or changing any user's files or settings, adding or removing users, etc.   (I'm hiding complexity here: there is also a middle layer called groups if you want more.)

If you're just setting up for one user, like your mom, when you're installing just make one user account and you're done.  The installer will prompt you through it.

If you you're setting up for kids, we want each of them to have their own account without administrator privileges, and we want the grownups to still be able to administer the machine, so we'll make one grownup account at least.

After install, choose the menu System -> Administration -> Users and Groups which will give you a list of users.  Select yourself and hit properties.  On the User Privileges tab, give yourself Administer the system (at least, and any others that sound good!).  Back on the list of users, add users for each of your kids and make sure they don't have Administer the system checked.  


We'll be needing these superpowers later.

Bedtime!

The first problem I needed to solve after my little one was given a computer for his room was find a way to keep him from sneaking some web games at 2am.   My intention was to tell the computer to enforce some acceptable hours: 7am-8pm in my case.   There are two easy methods.

Killer Method
This first method assumes you're running Ubuntu but will work on most variants.  You'll also need to have your kids set up with their own accounts, which you can do during your install or any time afterwards.  We'll cover installing and users in another post, if you don't have that already.

There's probably a kinder way to do this (in Linux there's always many ways to do something) but we're going to schedule a little task that will unceremoniously end all kid programs after hours.  If they log back in, it will kill them again and they'll be back at the login prompt.

Step 1.  Press Alt-F2 which should pop up a Run Application box, where you should type the following, then press Run:

gksu gedit /etc/cron.d/bedtime

Step 2: A gedit text editor will appear.  Copy the following text and paste it into the editor, then customize to suit.  The first word,  *, means we'll run every minute.  The second word, "21-23,0-7" means every hour from 8pm to 7am.  The next three are day of month, month, and day of week, but in this case the * again means "all" for them.  Joey is your victim's user name.

* 21-23,0-7 * * * root /usr/bin/pkill -u joey > /dev/null 2>&1

Step 3: Choose menu File->Save and then File->Quit. That's it!

Router Method
Another method bears mentioning.  Many routers, in my example here the venerable Linksys WRT54G, have an access control screen that will let you allow or deny a list of PCs, identified by their MAC address, on a given schedule, to access the internet.  This one also lets you further limit them to certain sites or block them from certain others.  Your router will surely vary.

One advantage of this method is it works on all machines, not just Linux ones, without touching them. Place your victim's MAC address in an access list (because you want to use the Internet after the kids' bedtime, right?).  Chose a schedule, and off they go.  If you're going to use the blocking feature, note that doing a few sites with the router is great but will quickly reach its limits.  In another post we'll set up OpenDNS, where you can chose whole categories of sites to allow or not.

About Box

There doesn't seem to be too much written about how to set up a Linux system for use by kids and non-expert adult family members, who may each have their own interesting requirements. In this blog, I hope to cover topics to let these users participate in the home and on the Internet safely.

Linux is not for everyone, but it definitely presents some advantages over Mac OS and Windows:

1. Minimal malware concern. At the moment, malware is mostly a Windows phenomenon where clicking on the wrong thing in an email or web browser will infect your machine in seconds without your knowledge. After that point, your machine may become a zombie spam factory, broadcast your personal account information to its masters, or attempt to infect other machines on your network. Happily for Linux users, for the moment, Linux systems are reasonably secure so it's safe to let a beginner loose--with some common sense--and they can't hurt much.
2. Antivirus. Along with (1), no antivirus software subscription is required.
3. Cost. You don't have to pay for the operating system (Windows or Mac OS), or Office either. Most of what you need for home use can be downloaded for free. Web browsing, mail, light office work, and roughly 30,000 other programs, all free to use.
4. Machine. If you have an older, slower machine, Linux is very modular and can be pared down to deal with fewer resources, removing the parts you don't need. If you have an old virus infested Windows box, you can clean it off and put Linux down. Old boxes might not be the best for large screen video but will do fine for light web and mail.
5. Customization. Linux makes it easy to customize its look and feel, behavior, almost everything. This comes in handy when setting up for kids to help keep them out of trouble.
6. Easy setup. Starting with any old machine, you basically download a CD, boot it, answer a few questions, and in a few minutes you have a running machine that can get on the net. Customizing it further will be the subject of future posts.

Linux may not be for you if need Windows-proprietary software. If you must have QuickBooks, SAP, Netflix videos, full Outlook and Office, or the latest PC game, then Linux might not be for you. If you have some unusual hardware that has Windows-only drivers--watch out especially for printers here--then you might need at least one Windows machine in your house to talk to it.

I'll keep comments open on posts so we might get some dialog going.