How can I set computer usage time limits?

Question

I've got an old computer that I put Ubuntu on for my kids (11, 9, and 7). They're always fighting for who can get on the computer and I'm sick of trying to figure out who has had enough time.

Anyway, they each have different accounts on the computer and I would like to find something similar to an Internet café type of solution that gives each user an allotted amount of time per day or week that they can be logged in. Once the time is used up, they're kicked off and can't log in again until their time is automatically reset.

An example of how I would like this to work would be: child 1 gets 120 minutes per week.

• Day 1: 30 min
• Day 2: 0 min
• Day 3: 30 min
• Day 4: 30 min
• Day 5: 30 min
• Day 6: Can't log in
• Day 7: Can't log in
• Day 8: 30 min (day one fell off the 7 day revolving time period).
• etc.

Is there anything like that available for Ubuntu?

Answer 1

TimeKpr

I guess it has everything you need. Limit access time per day per user, easy gui for configuration, abitlity to bypass for a day, add some "reward time", notification of remaining time for users, etc.

The project page is here. They also have a PPA for ubuntu which you can add to your Software Sources: deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/timekpr-maintainers/ppa/ubuntu lucid main. And install via Software Center or via CLI: sudo apt-get install timekpr.

Answer 2

Auto-logoff is extremely frustrating if you are in the middle of something. It's violent, it's brutal, it's plain rude. And it doesn't matter how old you are. It's one thing when you are just computer addicted and it's very different when you are tracking time and get kicked out 5 seconds before you managed to click that submit button or save your document. I suggest you to consider using an auto-reminder instead of an auto-kicker. That will teach your kids to respect each other and allow each other to use the computer willingly.

There's even a lighter alternative. Start by tracking the amount of time that each kid spends using the computer and make the gathered data available for all of them so they can see it. This incredibly simple thing alone (applied to internet bandwidth spent) has saved my life when I was being the network admin in an office full of adults. The public stats about bandwidth usage for each computer (just the amount of bytes, not deanonymizing info like lists of visited sites etc) turned the situation from "me - the evil greedy admin against them - the poor abused office users" to "man, you downloaded 5 times more than me, that's bad!" "sorry, I downloaded indeed, I watched a lot of youtube during lunch breaks, won't do it anymore at this rate" - I was simply excluded from the confrontation scenario.

Answer 3

Technical answer that I'm not going to bother understanding myself:

This is the thread: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=843510 for this software: https://launchpad.net/webcontentcontrol which has this plan in the works: https://blueprints.launchpad.net/webcontentcontrol/+spec/time-control

Would you be okay with something that allowed you to limit time spent on the internet? Or do they actually like gaming on Ubuntu?