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:

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

Usage

TODO

Recipes

TODO