-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Vasilis Kalintiris wrote on 28/01/09 03:31: >... > I believe that it would be very nice to offer the ability to parents to > monitor theirs children activity on PCs in a simple and easy way. After > all Ubuntu is a distribution that offers simplicity and out-of-the-box > experience to its end users. > > For example we could provide a package with: > > 1) An advanced keylogger > 2) A report system about the activity of the user (aka child-teen) > 3) Restricted access to hardcore material > 4) Logs from Pidgin and other common chat programs > 5) Irregular - Suspicious filesystem activity notification (hidden folders) >...
This is one area in which Ubuntu is much less flexible than Windows and Mac OS X. As you may have realized from the other replies, the sort of people who gravitate toward Free Software projects usually think parental controls are either too difficult to implement, or a bad idea, or both. You can see similar viewpoints on Brainstorm. <http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/1244/> The unreliability of blacklist-style Web filtering also clouds discussion of other parental control mechanisms, such as whitelist e-mail or IM filtering, time limits, or easy-to-read logs. (For example, in this thread Brian Curtis recommends that parents "check out the logs provided in /var/log", without explaining how on earth they would know how to do that.) I suggest instead taking up this issue with the companies that sell computers with Ubuntu on it. If enough customers demand parental control features, those companies may invest in implementing them, precisely because they know volunteers won't. Ubuntu Christian Edition <http://ubuntuce.com/> and Ubuntu Muslim Edition <http://ubuntume.com/> both include built-in configuration interfaces for Web filtering. But that's only a small subset (and the least reliable subset) of what you're looking for, the interfaces are rather awkward, and the rest of those systems may not be to your taste. Cheers - -- Matthew Paul Thomas http://mpt.net.nz/ -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iEYEARECAAYFAkmBntMACgkQ6PUxNfU6ecpYfACcCQ+54Uemff6s3NQMUmVErBCx bkoAoNLv2aq6wM4uz9QsTxgaeBMWRaGe =XEEK -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
