Has Gnome Nanny been abandoned?

[newb85]

I guess the gist of what I'm asking is in the title. Gnome Nanny doesn't work on Natty (I suspect because Natty is running on Unity, rather than true Gnome), and it doesn't look like anything has happened with the project in over a year.

[newb85]

This is still something I'd be interested in knowing.

Nanny used to be installed by default (and a selling point) for Edubuntu. Is that still the case? Does it still work on Edubuntu? Has it been replaced?

[Frogs Hair]

The reviews in the software center seem to indicate it doesn't work for many people . I don't know if it that is unity related because 11.04 has Gnome 2 . If it works in Classic Ubuntu in 11.04 then I guess it would be Unity related .

[3Miro]

http://projects.gnome.org/nanny/

I don't think this has anything to do with Unity, the gnome page says that Nanny works on GNOME 2.28, which is like Ubuntu 9.04 or 9.10. Apparently Nanny doesn't work on Gnome 3 or anything deriving form it (i.e. Unity).

[ringo28]

nanny work for a part not full... you can block internet with times, and thats it.. nanny before had blacklist, in the previous versions but it doesnt came with unity..,with 11.04 does time-kpr his job even in 11.10 doesnt work anymore..


not a good evolution off ubuntu you can get free office but simple use of nanny dont work of a few kkilobytes..

it must be standard too use..!!!!

[3Miro]

nanny work for a part not full... you can block internet with times, and thats it.. nanny before had blacklist, in the previous versions but it doesnt came with unity..,with 11.04 does time-kpr his job even in 11.10 doesnt work anymore..


not a good evolution off ubuntu you can get free office but simple use of nanny dont work of a few kkilobytes..

it must be standard too use..!!!!

Again, this has nothing to do with Unity. Nanny no longer works with the latest version of Gnome (Unity runs on top of Gnome). The decision to "abandon" Nanny has nothing to do with Ubuntu or Canonical.

[ringo28]

not what i mean, i ment that you can block internet connection... it is not part of ubuntu or canonical, but such a simple program like that is a big value in furter version of ubuntu, so better make a own version of it. a standard office is good, a nanny for standard appilication can only make more safety, especially for kids..

[Frogs Hair]

not what i mean, i ment that you can block internet connection... it is not part of ubuntu or canonical, but such a simple program like that is a big value in furter version of ubuntu, so better make a own version of it. a standard office is good, a nanny for standard appilication can only make more safety, especially for kids..

You can look in to this more closely . https://help.ubuntu.com/community/DansGuardian

[ringo28]

Thats not like net nanny.i should try it.., with timekpr or net nanny is relative small programm to have in the package, you can block computer times too, with dansguardian does it too??

[ringo28]

i think ubuntu must try too reach much as posible people too use linux. and some of them have kids.., for those people is dansguardian to technical. you must make the gap bigger to the traditional os or linux.. you must make it easy for those too.., then you can better go 20year back too msdos.. who can handle them these days? so.., I want nanny back :) and i dont want downgrade the system too much .. :)

nanny is easy too handle and you block websites and user accounts ..

gr ringo

[Frogs Hair]

i think ubuntu must try too reach much as posible people too use linux. and some of them have kids.., for those people is dansguardian to technical. you must make the gap bigger to the traditional os or linux.. you must make it easy for those too.., then you can better go 20year back too msdos.. who can handle them these days? so.., I want nanny back :) and i dont want downgrade the system too much .. :)

nanny is easy too handle and you block websites and user accounts ..

gr ringo

You would have to contact the developer/s and encourage them to continue development for Gnome 3 or get involved . I am not affected by the lack of parental controls , but I know it is important . There may be other software available , Nanny and Dans Guardian may not be the only options . There are hundreds of Linux distributions and and only two programs ? Ubuntu Brainstorm may be another place to suggest the Idea of providing such software , at least you would be heard . Developers don't often visit or read this forum .

[ringo28]

mayby hundred of distribution. but has almost same hart. was a time my belgium Eid dint work proper. on the Opensuse and even ubuntu. and even now work not 100%. even on my xubuntu, persons en groups my son can change different thinks.. i put tehe speed lower, and he can change higher.. the hart of ubuntu linux gone too big....

[newb85]

My intent was not to blame Canonical/the Ubuntu devs. Yes, it's a separate project. I guess the original post was a lazy way to find out if it was pointless to hope for updates/fixes.

While I have no doubt that Dansguardian is a very powerful tool, it's just too darn difficult for the average user to set up. I'm sure there are many possibilities, but nothing is intuitive or straight-forward. There are sets of instructions out there, but they all seem to be written for experienced network administrators, not parents.

It seems to me that having a working program like gnome-nanny not only working, but marketed to parents, would be a great way to expose young people to Ubuntu/Linux. Down the road, they'll be the ones choosing their OS.

[johnathanamber]

@newb85,

I too am a parent seeking easier to administer parental controls.

It might be something to look into, but Untangle is something you might want to consider. It does have web content filtering and requires a dedicated computer to filter out your network. But again, that might be too confusing.

I've recently been looking at nanny... and there is an installable option for Ubuntu 12.04. I am using xubuntu-desktop though and it doesn't seem to be working with XFCE, which requires some diagnosis and fixing.

I've used Dansguardian and liked it, it did the job well, but you are right, it is difficult to configure.

There does seem to be a lack of parental control software that is easy to use for Ubuntu.

For now, until a better option is available, have you considered OpenDNS?
https://www.opendns.com/home-solutions/parental-controls/

Basically, you setup some DNS servers on your local computers and they use OpenDNS to block *some* porn, malware sites, phishing, etc.

You can even set it up on your router to protect the whole network. Not much in customization though like a Dansguardian or Nanny, etc.

You also might want to consider the Ubuntu distro 'edubuntu.'
https://edubuntu.org

If you install it on your systems, I believe it has parental controls built in... i.e. nanny, etc.

I am still looking for a good alternative to Dansguardian that is easy to implement.

God bless,
Johnathan

[newb85]

Yes, I had considered OpenDNS, but haven't tried it. I think it would be very effective for content filtering, and the nice thing is that it would be network-wide, device-independent. I'm fairly certain it would take me less than 30 seconds to get around it with normal user privileges in Ubuntu, but I doubt the others who use my network know this.

Really, what attracted me to the Nanny was the ability to limit when users can log on.

[newb85]

I recently did some experimenting, and discovered a couple things about Nanny.

First, there's a missing dependency that's built into the Gnome desktop environment. If I install Nanny on a machine that has Gnome installed, I can open Nanny. If I install it on a machine without Gnome, I can't get any farther than the password prompt. And, for some reason Gnome has to be installed before Nanny--the reverse order didn't work. (I had to apt-get purge both and install in the correct order for Nanny to work.)

Second, the scheduling is in GMT. (This one took some tinkering to figure out.) I'm not sure how this glaring issue was never addressed by the developers. Once I figured this one out, the scheduling worked for the browser, email client, and chat client. (I tested Firefox, Thunderbird, and Empathy.)

Still no dice on scheduling when a user can log in to the computer. I'm assuming this functionality broke when Ubuntu switched to LightDM, since that change was more recent than the latest build of Nanny.