Parental control for mint linux

Question

I am looking for a parent control for mint linux with the following features:

1. Allow parent to remotely lock/unlock
2. Limit the total duration for an account to be used by all the applications.
3. Allow individual limits per application
4. Setup times in the morning and in the evening outside which selected applications would not work

Something similar to the mobile Screen Time Labs application, but for Linux Mint.

Any ideas?

EDIT 1

I am OK with commercial solutions for a reasonable price. There must be something on the Linux market.

Answer 1

Here https://github.com/vasyaod/parental-control a simple daemon is provided with following features:

• flexible week schedule
• convenient yaml config
• supporting multiple users
• time counter
• daily limits
• simple web UI (installation of UI is not obligatory) which allows to see
  • state of consumed time for current date
  • statistics of consumed time

Answer 2

Timekpr, (or Timekpr-Revived), does some of what you are looking for and may be worth a look.

• Limit login durations
• Limit available login times (everyday or specific days)
• Different limits for each login account

Answer 3

I've just released a version 0.2 of my application LittleBrother that is able to monitor play time on Linux machines. Test users are welcome to try the Debian package. Instructions on how to download and use it can be found here: https://github.com/marcus67/little_brother. The installation may still be a little rough, though. These are the features of the application:

LittleBrother has the following features:

• Any number of users can be monitored.

• Each user can have a specific set of rules defining the permitted playtime.

• Rules can be adapted to "contexts", such as the day of the week and/or a vacation schedule (currently only the German schedules are supported).

• Play time can be restricted to a time window (from, to).

• A maximum play time per day can be defined.

• Users can be forced to take a break after a certain maximum session time.

• Users can be forced to wait for a minimum break time after their activity.

• Any number of Linux client hosts can be monitored (currently this requires users to have the same login on all machines).

• There is a master host with a history of the activities of all users. This master host checks the rule sets and prompts the client hosts to terminate processes if required.

• The master host offers a simple web interface for viewing the user activity over a configured history length (e.g. 7 days) and an administration page to dynamically define rule exceptions for a configured number of days into the future.

• The web application can be run behind a proxy so that it will be accessible from away allowing remote administration after receiving calls from young users begging for more play time.

• The application has international language support. Currently English and German translations are provided. Users are invited to provide translations for other languages.

• The application uses voice generation to inform the user over impending logouts. Also these spoken messages are internationalized. Optionally, users can be notified using four different popup tools.

• Downtime of a server during playtime (e.g. due to hibernation) is automatically substracted from the play time.

• In addition to the time spent on Linux hosts the application can also monitor activity time on other devices such as smart phones or tables. It takes advantage of the fact that most modern operating systems put devices in some kind of power saving mode while they are not being used. This way, the network response (by pinging) can be used to determine the activity on those devices. In contrast to the Linux hosts, the application will not be able the terminate the activity. The play time, however, will be added to the overall playtime and hence will have an impact on the time allowed and also on the break time rules on the Linux hosts.

• There is a Docker image available (currently for the slave only) which makes it really easy to run a slave on a Linux host with a Docker deamon available.

Some screenshots: