The parental control tool offered by Linux Mint allows parents to monitor and restrict their children's access to inappropriate content. It includes options for website blocking and content filtering to ensure the safety and security of young users.
MintNanny is a parental control software that allows parents to restrict their children from accessing specific websites. In Microsoft Windows, setting up parental controls is a breeze, but when it comes to Linux, the process is quite challenging. While there are packages like DansGuardian, it takes considerable technical know-how and the use of a proxy to configure it effectively. In response to numerous user feedback regarding the complexity of restricting access in Linux, MintNanny was created.
The software is designed to be straightforward and easy to use by implementing a minimal set of features in the Linux Mint 6 version. MintNanny helps to block domain names through a graphical interface that adds an entry to the "/etc/hosts" file, assigning the domain's IP address to 0.0.0.0, thus rendering the domain inaccessible. However, note that the block applies to all users and protocols and not specific users or programs.
It is important to understand that MintNanny blocks domain names and not IP addresses. Therefore, if the user attempts to access the blocked domain through another device on the network, it may still be accessible. Certain domains also use subdomains, so blocking them may require blocking these subdomains as well. Users are advised to test the efficacy of the blocking by attempting to access the website after blocking it.
One shortcoming of MintNanny is that Firefox caches DNS resolutions, meaning that even after blocking a website, the browser remembers the website's location until you close it, so restarting Firefox is necessary. The software is easy to install from the Romeo repositories by running "apt install mintnanny-gnome" in the terminal or "apt install mintnanny-kde" if you run KDE.
MintNanny is expected to feature in Linux Mint 6 Felicia, and the developers are working to make it available in multiple languages. Users who speak a language other than English can participate in translating this tool through a forum thread. In summary, MintNanny is an easy-to-use parental control software that ensures that children cannot access restricted websites on a Linux system.
The software is designed to be straightforward and easy to use by implementing a minimal set of features in the Linux Mint 6 version. MintNanny helps to block domain names through a graphical interface that adds an entry to the "/etc/hosts" file, assigning the domain's IP address to 0.0.0.0, thus rendering the domain inaccessible. However, note that the block applies to all users and protocols and not specific users or programs.
It is important to understand that MintNanny blocks domain names and not IP addresses. Therefore, if the user attempts to access the blocked domain through another device on the network, it may still be accessible. Certain domains also use subdomains, so blocking them may require blocking these subdomains as well. Users are advised to test the efficacy of the blocking by attempting to access the website after blocking it.
One shortcoming of MintNanny is that Firefox caches DNS resolutions, meaning that even after blocking a website, the browser remembers the website's location until you close it, so restarting Firefox is necessary. The software is easy to install from the Romeo repositories by running "apt install mintnanny-gnome" in the terminal or "apt install mintnanny-kde" if you run KDE.
MintNanny is expected to feature in Linux Mint 6 Felicia, and the developers are working to make it available in multiple languages. Users who speak a language other than English can participate in translating this tool through a forum thread. In summary, MintNanny is an easy-to-use parental control software that ensures that children cannot access restricted websites on a Linux system.
What's New
Version 1.0.1: N/A