[ale] Niece's laptop

Mark Wright mpwright at speedfactory.net
Mon Jul 31 12:49:36 EDT 2006


I would try Dans Guardian.  There is a link on Dan's website that  
describes setup for a single machine using tiny proxy instead of  
squid.  I managed to make it work in one evening.  I was using Ubuntu  
and the unofficial how-to was using Ubuntu.

I have been really happy with Dan's filtering.  I even had to edit a  
prohibited list of words to allow my boys to look at airsoft guns  
online.  I liked that.

Mark

Encourage her to keep the Thinkpad in service.



On Jul 31, 2006, at 10:40 AM, Dow_Hurst wrote:

> My niece has a IBM Thinkpad 770Z that had Win98 on it.  She does  
> mainly AIM messaging and watches DVDs.  I think she browses the web  
> some but this is thru AOL's security enabled browser that blocks  
> most inappropriate content.  The DVD player stopped working and the  
> machine would lock up alot.  I offered to put Linux on it and set  
> it up for her.  Right now, I have SUSE 10.1 on it, DVDs will play,  
> and firefox runs.  Of course it is slow, but it is useable.   
> However, the concern is the lack of any oversite on the browsing of  
> the web.  The machine is pushed to the max just running 10.1 and  
> KDE.  I tried XFCE but it is so plain that I am sure the more usual  
> graphical environment of KDE is what my neice will use.  How can I  
> filter out bad sites as well as AOL security center would?  Can the  
> machine manage that and get updated on it's own somehow?  Is there  
> a service or site that does what AOL's software does for protecting  
> kids while browsing the web?
>
> Kopete will manage online messaging just fine.  Abiword is fast  
> enough for word processing for school.  Firefox is great for  
> browsing.  I even had a wifi card from Edimax that will work well  
> with SUSE.
>
> The machine is a PII at 366MHz with 128Mb RAM.  Has a small 10Gb  
> hard drive that is a bit noisy.  She earned the money and bought  
> the machine herself.  I hate to say to her that I can't help and I  
> need to put Win98 back on it with AOL's software just to please my  
> sister and brother-in-law.  Any ideas on what would be best?
>
> There is a Linksys wifi WRT54G router in the house she will connect  
> thru.  I believe there is a service from Linksys for filtering web  
> pages available there.  I'd love comments.  Even a new laptop as a  
> gift would still need to have good filtering of web browsing.  I  
> just can't plan on being able to manage the filter list manually as  
> I don't have that kind of time or dedication!
> Thanks,
> Dow
>
>
> No sig.
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