It’s a part of  Windows 7 too.

Have you used Windows Parental Controls? I’d be interested to hear your opinions in the comments.

Despite them being too young for full-time education, they do have their own computer: a Dell Inspiron 6000 laptop running a popular operating system called Ubuntu.
The Dell was showing its age: its battery had died for the second time and we’d long since replaced it  with another laptop so it had sat in a cupboard waiting for a new life. Like most computers, it had Windows XP on it.
Windows XP is fine for most people: it’s my operating system of choice because it runs everything that I want, but I’d always held a candle for Linux. Linux costs nothing to download and use and is inherently more resilient to viruses than Windows. However, until recently it wasn’t as pleasant to use as  a Windows PC.

Linux is produced my many different companies and organisations, and a few years back a version called ‘Ubuntu‘ gained a lot of popularity.

Notebook running Ubuntu

In 2009 a version was released that could legitimately claim to offer the usability of Windows. It is incredibly easy to install, requiring nearly no technical knowledge. It comes with a decent word processor and spreadsheet in the form of openoffice.org, and the excellent Firefox web browser. Other software such as Skype, Picasa and Chrome are able available for Linux.

One of Ubuntu’s strongest features is a software store, where you can browse through various categories of software and click to download.

Ubuntu Software Centre

For the kids, the first thing I downloaded was Edubuntu: a collection of educational software including GCompris and Potato Guy. These are aimed at pre-school and junior school kids, with games at one end teaching basic mouse and keyboard skills, to more advanced games teaching language, maths and science.

Screenshots from GCompris

It doesn’t stop there. When you set up Ubuntu, you can create different user accounts. I’ve got one for myself and one for the kids. The kids’ account cannot install software or make any system changes. If they try, they’re prompted to enter my password.
Because I wanted to make the computer as easy-to-use as possible, I’ve set it up to log into their account automatically and the great thing is that the computer starts quicker under Ubuntu than it every did using Windows XP. The kids have an old mouse that they’ve decorated with their stickers and when they’re done I just close the lid and put it back on the shelf.
I’ve put music and movies onto it, so last week when they went on holiday only to find it raining, we had a library of movies and games to keep them amused.

Like the idea, but not ready to commit? Ubuntu always starts in ‘live’ mode, where it runs from the installation CD before touching your hard drive. You can try it out for size before deciding to install it on your PC.

There’s a lot to like about Ubuntu, but there are downsides. Most of the commercial software available is for Windows PCs. Our Dora games won’t run (at least not easily) on Ubuntu. Secondly, there’s no legal way to play DVDs on Ubuntu. There are instructions on how to make Ubuntu play DVDs but you’ve got to be prepared to look under the hood and get your hand a bit dirty.

But on balance, I’m very happy with my Ubuntu PC. When the kids get a bit older I’ll set up the OpenDNS firewall on it to keep them safer online. I already have Dropbox on it to allow me access to my most important data should I want to use it for my work, and OpenOffice is installed as standard so I can edit Word, Excel and Powerpoint files. Ubuntu have worked with Dell a lot in recent years and so most recent Dell hardware is supported (making installation on my 4-year-old Dell laptop a breeze) and it also works with my HP printer without issue.

If you like what you’ve read and would like more detailed instructions, please say so in the comments. In fact, please feel free to leave a comment all the same!

The theory behind a firewall is fine: a firewall is a piece of software that sits between you and the internet, blocking any traffic that violates a set of pre-determined rules. In practice, the Australian national firewall seemed easy to bypass and would most likely have caused internet speeds to slow dramatically as every bit of data that flowed into or out of the country had to be checked.

However, just because the nation isn’t being firewalled doesn’t mean you can’t implement your own.There are a number of firewall products available, but I’d like to use this article to talk about OpenDNS.
OpenDNS is free, relatively simple to implement and can be set up on your internet router to affect all traffic, no matter whether you’re using a PC, Mac, Playstation or iPod.

With OpenDNS, you get to choose the type of content that your family can view, and they make it simple for you by grouping websites into 55 categories such as ‘Games’, ‘Health’, ‘Tasteless’, ‘Chat’, and so on…
You can override these categories for specific sites too. Let’s say you block the ‘News/Media’ category but want to access the local newspaper, you can simply add the newspaper’s website to a ‘whitelist’. Similarly, you may not want to block the ‘religious’ category but are concerned about a specific religious website. Simply add that website to your ‘blacklist’ and it’ll be blocked.
The free version of OpenDNS lets you blacklist or whitelist 25 domains.

If somebody in your house visits a blocked site, they see a page with a message and picture that you can customise explaining why the page they want to view is blocked.

OpenDNS doesn’t just let you block sites. It also keeps a track of all sites that have been visited, allowing you to check what was viewed and when. If you find that certain objectionable sites are being viewed, you can then decide how best to stop them being viewed.

As hinted at before, you can subscribe to premium versions of OpenDNS, with a family pack available for just under US$10 per year.
I’ve only covered the big features of OpenDNS here: content filtering and logging. There are a few more strings to its bow including anti-phishing technology. You can read all about it on the OpenDNS website.

Of course, monitoring and blocking what your kids do online has its limitations and, in the opinion of this dad, must play second fiddle to teaching your kids how to stay safe online.

Finally, an admission: I don’t use openDNS myself because my kids are not yet old enough to read and so are not yet likely to get into chatrooms or similar places. I let them loose in places like the excellent CBeebies website and remain watchful in case they find a way of clicking out of it. Once they get old enough to type search queries into Google or have an email account, I’ll certainly be looking for ways to keep objectionable content from their eyes.

Widemouth Bay Panorama

We were walking the sheepdogs on the beach. My kids had just come from an Australian summer and were not all that impressed with the cold, driving onshore wind. The dogs loved the surf that it generated though!

Since posting, I’ve realised I missed a big blend on the left of the image. I’ll fix that in due course and update this post.

Panorama across Paris

I didn’t get much of a chance to set the photo up. We were in Paris for a few days and I’d not known about this rooftop terrace until we got there. Consequently I had to make do with the available light and the camera was handheld and in auto mode.