IMO, this is easier to setup than selinux, *may* meet all your needs and will not be affected by upgrades.
I would agree with this. Try just creating a user with "rbash" as his login shell and then "sudo /bin/su - username". Poke around and see what you are able to do, and you'll find out if it meets your needs. rbash is not as secure as SELinux or creating a chroot environment but it is a whole lot easier to set up.