Nanny - parental control for ubuntu mate - a fork, perhaps?

Development Discussion
#1

Hallo the development team

I believe there was a package called nanny, which provided a"parental control GUI". It was removed from the ubuntu repositories a couple of years ago as far as I know. However, I heard that it lived on at the Gnome project. IF ubuntu mate does not have an equivalent package, would this be a candidate for a fork (or whatever)? If we want to help parents with younger children encourage their children to use linux this could be a worthwhile project.

Will I help? I’m not a programmer, so apart from launching the idea I don’t think that I can contribute anything of value.

I’ve just upgraded a Macbook Pro 6,2 to ubuntu mate 15.04 - I’m really impressed. Well done to all involved!

MintNanny Fork (Domain Blocker)
#2

Having come across this situation before there are two major problems:

  • Linux advocates tend to be very much against censorship and
    similar concepts, so there are few solutions available for the platform;

  • The one you point to is years out-of-date, as its GitHub entry shows.

I have found that OpenDNS is a neat solution which doesn’t require any extra software; it can be configured to block any combination of dozens of page topics.

#3

I agree with prettty much everything you said @palourie but . . .

I’d suggest OpenNIC instead because OpenDNS is riddled with Ads and Portal Captures. Also as of only about a week ago, Cisco announced they are buying OpenDNS.

#4

I currently use OpenDNS at home because I know how to configure dnsmasq to override the ad injection that @MichaelTunnell mentioned.

That said, I have a young family and the old GNOME Nanny was pretty amazing. I have considered porting it to MATE, which is a tonne of work, but time is the enemy :cry:

I’d love for someone to port Nanny to MATE.

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Parental controls
#5

The ads have been removed (apparently - I don’t recall ever seeing one) …

That said, OpenNIC is very fast, but it doesn’t appear to offer filtering.

#6

I like the idea to make Ubuntu MATE more children-friendly. Is this project still under consideration? Unfortunately, I cannot help on a technical side. Reviving this topic will perhaps help to get more people on board.

#7

Hallo

Please see:

for the current situation, as far as I’m aware of it. :slight_smile:

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#8

Hello @Wimpy, I've been trying to figure out how set up OpenDNS on my newly installed UM desktop, but have been unsuccessful (see thread below). Can you please show me how you made it work? I have a young family as well. Thank you.