Child-friendly, parent-guided Wayland desktop environment alternative that puts parents, not platforms, in control

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Albert Armea 2a5a0b7443 Add "hello world" clock application		2025-12-22 23:50:06 -05:00
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LICENSE.md	Design goals README	2025-12-21 23:52:15 -05:00
README.md	Design goals README	2025-12-21 23:52:15 -05:00

README.md

shepherd-launcher

A child-friendly, parent-guided launcher for Wayland, allowing supervised access to applications and content that you define.

Its primary goal is to return control of child-focused computing to parents, not software or hardware vendors, by providing:

the ease-of-use of game consoles
access to any application that can be run, emulated, or virtualized in desktop Linux
with access controls similar to iOS Screen Time

While this repository provides some recipes for existing software packages (including non-free software), shepherd-launcher is non-prescriptive: as the end user, you are free to use (or not use) them or write your own.

Screenshots

TODO:

home screen at different times showing different applications
modern proprietary application showcase (Minecraft, individual Steam games)
emulated application showcase (ScummVM games, 90s edutainment on Win9x, Waydroid)
externally managed ChromeOS Flex for access to school resources
media showcase (local storage and individual titles from streaming services)
time limit popup
"token" system

Installation

tl;dr:

any Linux with Wayland (optional: TPM-based FDE plus BIOS password to prevent tampering)
Sway + config
binaries (TODO: deployable package that depends on Sway and installs the config)
test session on login
configure auto-login to this session

Usage

TODO

Recipes

TODO