How to block *system* applications from child account?

I’m setting up my 7 year old’s first computer and I’ve set up a child account and limited access to a core set of applications for him to get started with, things like TuxType and Scratch.

Parental Controls give me no options to restrict access to key system applications like Terminal, the disk utility, and things like Evolution (which I don’t want him using for many years).

How do I block this entire set of applications from my child having access to? For example, I went into the disk application and it gives me the option to delete the disk partition! (I didn’t proceed, so maybe the system will disallow the action entirely, but that’s beside the point).

What am I missing here? Seems to be a bit of an oversight allowing a child account to being able to open key system applications?

Thanks!

You must create a new account that is not an administrator, otherwise parental controls will not work.

…which I did. I’m able to block everything but the group of applications inside the Utilities folder and Evolution.

Why can I restrict Chromium but not Evolution? I can’t even uninstall it.

Sure, I can just restrict network access, but I don’t want it on his account.

Because Evolution has been included as a system application, you cannot remove it.

I understand that, but that point was not central to my original problem - I want it inaccessible to my child. He can open it and I have to listen to a 7 year old complain that “it’s not working”.

You’re right. You can force uninstallation by entering the following commands, but I don’t know how to remove the icon:

“sudo ostree admin unlock --hotfix”
“sudo apt remove evolution”

Hey, thanks for the tip. That solves half the issue. I’m not a total noob to Linux, so the second command I had already tried, but the first I wasn’t familiar with. I’ll give it a shot!

1 Like

This topic was automatically closed 28 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.