Locked-down Ubuntu for the elderly?

August 6, 2023 11:16 AM

My elderly relative uses Ubuntu on his desktop, and he keeps breaking it. I would like to lock it down in a way that I can manage remotely.

He likes to tweak stuff and install random things from the internet, so it's always getting corrupted. Then he reinstalls various versions of the OS which sometimes fails. This is only getting worse, so I want to give him a sandbox where he can screw up Ubuntu distros to his heart's content.

I would need to occasionally administer this remotely. Basically, Ubuntu remote managed desktop for seniors. Features I'd like:

* OS snapshot/rollback
* Remote access
* Mount folders on external drive or RAID (he will fill up all available partitions)

Things that won't work: Windows, Mac, Chromebook, unless they run Ubuntu transparently in a VM (he has an iPad and iPhone but he really wants to use Ubuntu)

I was thinking something like Proxmox but it might be overkill. Maybe some other VM-based solution would be practical? I would also consider buying a new system for this, his is pretty old.

posted by credulous to Computers & Internet (9 answers total)

Best answer: Does he need sudo? You can easily minimize the blast radius by not giving him sudo.

• timeshift is available on Ubuntu and does OS snapshot/rollback (it is not intended to backup user files)
• Digital Ocean has a tutorial on setting up xrdp
• I don't use Ubuntu but it definitely mounts external drives

You honestly probably want him using a thin client into a VM that you can blow away if it gets irredeemably messed up (where you're going with the Proxmox idea), but I honestly don't know enough about it to know how hard it would be to set up and administer.
posted by hoyland at 12:00 PM on August 6, 2023 [2 favorites]

I haven't tried any that use Ubuntu, but I'd recommend an immutable distro. The whole hook, of course, is that by being unchangeable, they're unbreakable. There are a bunch intended for developers, but here are some that are intended to be simple:
https://vanillaos.org/
https://fedoraproject.org/silverblue/
https://fedoraproject.org/kinoite/
https://blendos.co
posted by Snijglau at 12:08 PM on August 6, 2023 [3 favorites]

Response by poster: He doesn't technically *need* sudo, but sometimes he wants to install new packages or a specific version of a package and even figures out how to compile from source (often breaking other things). And if he can install fresh from CD he basically has sudo anyway.

I guess my choices are VM or lock down a LTS instance. I just don't know in 2023 what the best options are.
posted by credulous at 2:14 PM on August 6, 2023

Is he on board with this? If he has physical access to the hardware and is knowledgeable enough to use sudo and/or install from an optical drive, it sounds like you're SOL without his cooperation. A VM solution like proxmox might work, but only if you can get him to agree to not blow up the host OS. I feel like this will be at least somewhat tricky, since he'll have to learn how to / remember to install the new OS into the VM host, rather than the "easy way" of just making install media, running the installer on boot, and nuking the host filesystem.
posted by Alterscape at 3:57 PM on August 6, 2023 [3 favorites]

sometimes he wants to install new packages or a specific version of a package and even figures out how to compile from source (often breaking other things).

It sounds like he's technical enough to mess around with linux and enjoy it, but not technical enough to fix things? Or just not interested in doing that himself? Besides running VM images of ubuntu, is there any chance he could commit to only installing flatpaks/AppImages/snaps/etc, or be willing to learn how to clean up after himself and reinstall his own system if he breaks it?

Why is he installing all these packages in the first place, though? Is it for the pleasure of tinkering with stuff, or are there specific things he's trying to accomplish that the default packages don't let him?
posted by trig at 2:35 AM on August 7, 2023

I've never used it but I wonder if NixOS is a solution.
posted by Nelson at 6:55 AM on August 7, 2023

Best answer: Have him get another machine. (or maybe a second "recovery" partition?)

One to fuck around with to his hearts content and break however he wants. It sounds like he wants to play/learn with Linux/Ubuntu anyway.

on the "user" machine you put one of the immutable/rollback options. that way he can still look up how to un-fuck his os himself.
posted by ArgentCorvid at 7:16 AM on August 7, 2023

Best answer: You don't even need another machine. Just get him VirtualBox or a QEMU setup. (Proxmox is an option too.)

With Proxmox he could easily spin up new VMs (or LXC containers) and mess with them all he wants, as long as he doesn't break the host OS. It's all quite user friendly, even I (a certified idiot) can figure it out. It's built on top of Debian so everything else should be familiar.
posted by neckro23 at 9:49 AM on August 7, 2023

Can he learn how to get the latest ISO of his favorite distro and put it onto a USB drive (if made with "persistence," it remembers changes)? There are applications that make it pretty much automatic. If he did this, booting from the external drive, if things got messed up somehow, he would know how to make an updated new one for himself. He sounds like a hands-on kind of guy.
posted by The Half Language Plant at 6:05 PM on August 7, 2023