Portable Linux for school kids

[Dadcin]

Hi, my daughter meanwhile needs a computer for her homework from time to time. I am thinking of creating a bootable USB stick for her. That way she would have her own portable desktop on each computer, and you wouldn't have to worry about her deleting or breaking your stuff.

So it would be something like Tails, but child-friendly. Here are a few key points that came to my mind:

• Preferably a similar desktop design as MS-Windows
• Very simple to use (e.g. no overwhelming setting menus)
• As compatible, robust and stable as possible
• No extensive administrator rights for the child
• Persistent (programs, layouts, wallpaper, settings etc.)
• Custom VPN that cannot be changed or switched off by the child
• However, the child should be able to log into a Wi-Fi network by itself
• Remote maintenance preset (so that I can always help remotely)
• A "shared" area (e.g. a FAT32 partition), so that the USB stick can also be used normally for data exchange
• Access to a 2nd USB stick for data exchange (I'm not sure if this should be limited to a specific second USB stick, or if access to all external flash drives is okay)
• No access to the hard disks of the PC
• Automated online data backup
• Encryption of course (in case she looses the stick or forgets it somewhere)
• And it would be nice, if it would be easy to restore, in case of ... well ... kid

Does anyone have an idea, if something similar already exists? Or a suggestion how I could do it best myself (distribution, partitioning,...)? Are there any how-tos that you can recommend?

PS.: And yes I know she will need her own Laptop one day. But it's still too soon, too expensive and because we (her parents) are separated, she would always have to lug the laptop back and forth between Mom's and Dad's home.

 

[xanifer]

You probably want to use check out either Sugar https://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Downloads#MS_Windows
or LinuxKidX https://linuxkidx.blogspot.com/2009/03/linuxkidx-english-version-developed.html

 

[Brickwizard]

you will need to make the USB with persistence, following link is for Debian but the methodology is the same principle for all Linux

How to create a Debian live USB with persistence?

I would like to use Debian wherever I go by installing it on a USB flash drive, but I'm not sure how to make it save the settings and be able to install/update packages without loosing them on rebo...

unix.stackexchange.com

 

[Lord Boltar]

Beside the ones that @xanifer has mentioned I would add
Ubermix - https://ubermix.org/index.html
Zorin OS Education - https://zorin.com/os/education/

Because both of these are based on Ubuntu you can add MKUSB and make a persistent USB Thumb drive, quickly and easily

MKUSB - https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/how-to-create-ubuntu-persistence-using-mkusb/

 

[Dadcin]

Thank you so much for your quick and great responses. I have checked out your suggestions and links.

• Sugar and LinuxKidX might be for even younger kids.
• Ubermix and Zorin OS Education look very promising. I will test both of them.
• Brickwizard's link to the HowTo is great. I'm sure I'll need it, if Ubermix and Zorin OS are still not the right thing,

 

[Brickwizard]

Depending on the Age of the child, it should not take them long to pick up using a Linux distribution, perhaps a normal mid/lightweight distribution and let them choose their own desktop environment, if you want any specific packages most can be installed on any build

 

[CrazedNerd]

Depending on the Age of the child, it should not take them long to pick up using a Linux distribution, perhaps a normal mid/lightweight distribution and let them choose their own desktop environment, if you want any specific packages most can be installed on any build

Yeah probably best just to choose anyone and let them play with it, I believe parents can control online content through routers if that's really a concern.

 

[Brickwizard]

I believe parents can control online

Top 10 Best Parental Control Software for Linux System

To keep your kids safe from the dark side of technology you can use one of these parental control software or web filtering tool on Linux.

www.ubuntupit.com

 

[KGIII]

Maybe some refinement would help?

There's a lot of leeway with words like "child-friendly" and "kid".

There's a lot of differences between a five year old and a sixteen year old, or even a five year old and an eight year old. There's a great deal of difference in their cognitive abilities.

A five year old will need big and consistent in their desktop. A sixteen year old may require advanced physics modeling software.

As for admin rights and things like that, tech makes for a horrible parent - especially when compared to observation and education about safe practices. But, that's just my observation and conclusion.

 

[CrazedNerd]

Maybe some refinement would help?

There's a lot of leeway with words like "child-friendly" and "kid".

There's a lot of differences between a five year old and a sixteen year old, or even a five year old and an eight year old. There's a great deal of difference in their cognitive abilities.

A five year old will need big and consistent in their desktop. A sixteen year old may require advanced physics modeling software.

As for admin rights and things like that, tech makes for a horrible parent - especially when compared to observation and education about safe practices. But, that's just my observation and conclusion.

I originally laughed at the post because the OP has such a giant list of expectations for choosing an operating system for a child, and i do believe the question of what you want your child to spend their time doing (and even better, what the child enjoys doing) has a lot more relevance than technical controls.

The age of the kid is definetly important too. I wouldn't expect anyone younger than 10 to have the kinds of complex computer needs and capabilities than a typical linux user, but a kid younger than 10 that could certainly be "a hacker" and do more impressive stuff than i do.

 

[Dadcin]

It's less about control or hacking and more about the ability to be in a safe environment to explore and experiment on your own. The issue of child abuse on the Internet is much bigger and more aggressive than most people think. My daughter has had a cell phone for about 10 months. And already she gets sms and WhatsApp messages from strangers who want to make "friends" or send her dubious links. I have technically secured the phone and also educated her, but the reality is - if an intelligent adult can fall for phishing, you should not be so stupid to believe that a naive and curious child will not click on such a link. There is a documentary "Cyber Hell: Exposing an Internet Horror", I believe on Netflix, that left even me flabbergasted. What is shown there is extreme, but still this is reality. And one thing you can believe me ... a child with access to IT and the Internet, will certainly be confronted with child pornography before the age of 16 (probably even before 14). It doesn't matter if the child clicks on a link, becomes the target of a pedophile, someone shows something on the cell phone in the schoolyard, or it gets unwanted pictures and videos via messenger. It is impossible to prevent this, but I believe that you can protect the child from the worst, even without restricting too much.

My daughter is quite tech-savvy, which I want to encourage. Therefore, I want to create a system that she can use and explore unsupervised and still be secure.

I already protect the internet traffic mainly with a DNS-sinkhole (Pi-Hole). Therefore, it is important that the VPN works well. On the cell phone, this already works really good.

The other problem is installing software or running scripts. And I am sure that if she finds or gets an USB stick, she will put it in the computer out of curiosity and try it out, no matter what dad and mom told her. That's why I thought about restricting access to unknown external drives. But in the meanwhile I think that the risk is small enough so this restriction is not needed.

Then the point of a robust and stable system with automatic backups. Well, kids break things like all the time. Her mother and I live apart, and she doesn't know anything about IT. So I will often have to help remotely, and hope that the system otherwise runs as stable as possible.

Her mother would prefer our daughter alone not having access to the Internet at all. And to be honest, I understand that. Most parents don't have sufficient technical knowledge to set up good protection. The commercial parental control systems I've looked at are either insufficient and rarely get updates, or they are too strict and work with whitelists. I think the offers are created with the focus on children up to about 10 years. After that, parents have to figure things out for themselves for a few years. And from 14 or 15 the kids are so fit that they can bypass all technical barriers if they want to. By then, you should have managed to teach them sufficient media competence and have created enough trust that they will tell you what happened before shit hits the fan.

How do you handle this with your kids, especially in the 10-14 age range. And I would be more interested in practical approaches than theoretical or even philosophical ones.

 

[CrazedNerd]

It's less about control or hacking and more about the ability to be in a safe environment to explore and experiment on your own. The issue of child abuse on the Internet is much bigger and more aggressive than most people think. My daughter has had a cell phone for about 10 months. And already she gets sms and WhatsApp messages from strangers who want to make "friends" or send her dubious links. I have technically secured the phone and also educated her, but the reality is - if an intelligent adult can fall for phishing, you should not be so stupid to believe that a naive and curious child will not click on such a link. There is a documentary "Cyber Hell: Exposing an Internet Horror", I believe on Netflix, that left even me flabbergasted. What is shown there is extreme, but still this is reality. And one thing you can believe me ... a child with access to IT and the Internet, will certainly be confronted with child pornography before the age of 16 (probably even before 14). It doesn't matter if the child clicks on a link, becomes the target of a pedophile, someone shows something on the cell phone in the schoolyard, or it gets unwanted pictures and videos via messenger. It is impossible to prevent this, but I believe that you can protect the child from the worst, even without restricting too much.

My daughter is quite tech-savvy, which I want to encourage. Therefore, I want to create a system that she can use and explore unsupervised and still be secure.

I already protect the internet traffic mainly with a DNS-sinkhole (Pi-Hole). Therefore, it is important that the VPN works well. On the cell phone, this already works really good.

The other problem is installing software or running scripts. And I am sure that if she finds or gets an USB stick, she will put it in the computer out of curiosity and try it out, no matter what dad and mom told her. That's why I thought about restricting access to unknown external drives. But in the meanwhile I think that the risk is small enough so this restriction is not needed.

Then the point of a robust and stable system with automatic backups. Well, kids break things like all the time. Her mother and I live apart, and she doesn't know anything about IT. So I will often have to help remotely, and hope that the system otherwise runs as stable as possible.

Her mother would prefer our daughter alone not having access to the Internet at all. And to be honest, I understand that. Most parents don't have sufficient technical knowledge to set up good protection. The commercial parental control systems I've looked at are either insufficient and rarely get updates, or they are too strict and work with whitelists. I think the offers are created with the focus on children up to about 10 years. After that, parents have to figure things out for themselves for a few years. And from 14 or 15 the kids are so fit that they can bypass all technical barriers if they want to. By then, you should have managed to teach them sufficient media competence and have created enough trust that they will tell you what happened before shit hits the fan.

How do you handle this with your kids, especially in the 10-14 age range. And I would be more interested in practical approaches than theoretical or even philosophical ones.

I dont think a VPN will help with that a whole lot though, and ive personally been cyberbullied a lot online as a 33 year old dude so i would be just as concerned as you are. The most important thing is to encourage her to with hold information about herself online, even if that means lying. Also, its probably best overall that both of you feel comfortable about having conversations about content encountered on the internet.

Believe me, i get all sorts of wierd texts from people i don't know, so i know what you are talking about!

 

[CrazedNerd]

There are a ton of VPN services, so if you want a family VPN to protect your info from companies, then you should be able to find something to suite your needs.

 

[JasKinasis]

You could use pretty much any Linux distro.
Set yourself up as the initial, administrative user for it and then add your daughter as an ordinary, unprivileged, regular user.

Because she won't have administrative privileges, you will end up having to install whatever additional software she might need. So it will be worth knowing which programs she's going to need upfront, because she will have no way of installing things system-wide herself. She might be able to install some things locally, on her user account; if she is particularly savvy, but on the whole, she will need somebody with administrative access to install things for her.

So unless you want to be constantly bombarded with "Daaaad, I need {this}!", or "Dad, can you install {something else}?" - you'll need to make sure you install as many things as you think she'll need, upfront.
And if you set up something like GNU Nanny, that will filter the web-content that she's accessing. And if she's one of the sneaky types that refuses to get off their devices in a timely fashion before bedtime, you can also set up cut-off times to limit their computer/internet usage too.

Again - as long as your daughter doesn't have administrative rights, she can't do anything to circumvent any of the filters, or limits, or do anything to damage the system. Just make sure you don't use anything obvious for your password and don't leave your password lying around on scraps of paper! Ha ha!

 

[Dadcin]

I dont think a VPN will help with that a whole lot though, and ive personally been cyberbullied a lot online as a 33 year old dude so i would be just as concerned as you are. The most important thing is to encourage her to with hold information about herself online, even if that means lying. Also, its probably best overall that both of you feel comfortable about having conversations about content encountered on the internet.

Believe me, i get all sorts if wierd texts from people i don't know, so i know what you are talking about!

You are reading my posts as a 33 year old tech dude, not as a father. The purpose of the VPN is not to protect her personal data or to protect her from getting bullied. You think about using a VPN provider to hide your tracks.

I have set up a VPN-Server and a DNS-sinkhole, so 1.) The internet access on a public network is secure, 2.) to block the access to malicious, illegal and adult stuff, 3.) to be able to administrate her tech remotely and 4.) so she can connect to some services, like a minecraft server, I host at home.

 

[CrazedNerd]

I have set up a VPN-Server and a DNS-sinkhole, so 1.) The internet access on a public network is secure, 2.) to block the access to malicious, illegal and adult stuff, 3.) to be able to administrate her tech remotely and 4.) so she can connect to some services, like a minecraft server, I host at home.

A VPN might slow down her online gaming. VPNs also do not block illegal and adult stuff. I use a VPN for pirating movies, which is illegal. Also, lots of websites block computers that are routing their traffic through VPNs, so if she wanted to look up something school related it might not help with that.

The most effective way to block adult content would be through your router or some sort of software that she wouldn't be able to mess with through her own efforts. The most effective way to attack a complicated problem is to break it down into simple parts.

 

[Dadcin]

The most effective way to block adult content would be through your router or some sort of software that she wouldn't be able to mess with through her own efforts. The most effective way to attack a complicated problem is to break it down into simple parts.

As I wrote, it is my own VPN-Server, which I have set up and I control which Traffic is allowed and which not. I do this mostly with a DNS that I have set up, so all Traffic which comes through the VPN uses this DNS. All this is what you describe as "through your router or some sort of software". And yes, I think as well, this is the most effective way to block explicit content, that's why I've set this up that way.

And I know that a few sites block traffic from commercial VPN providers. Haven't experienced this problem with my private, custom VPN yet.

 

[CrazedNerd]

As I wrote, it is my own VPN-Server, which I have set up and I control which Traffic is allowed and which not. I do this mostly with a DNS that I have set up, so all Traffic which comes through the VPN uses this DNS. All this is what you describe as "through your router or some sort of software". And yes, I think as well, this is the most effective way to block explicit content, that's why I've set this up that way.

And I know that a few sites block traffic from commercial VPN providers. Haven't experienced this problem with my private, custom VPN yet.

Yeah i don't have any major networking experience.