Re sudo

[Derek Broughton]

On Wednesday 20 April 2005 08:30, Peter Barnes wrote:
> In view of the couple of threads on this topic I'd just like to make a
> comment as someone who is new to Linux. Like many migrants from Windows I
> tried Mandrake and Fedora at first and was puzzled by root accounts and
> user accounts. But then I read all the stuff telling you how good it is to
> have these, so it seems worthwhile.
>
> Then I tried Kubuntu and now I've to stop using a root account, so it's
> back to puzzle time. I soon learnt to use sudo but I still don't know if
> I'm doing things right. In Mandrake etc I had a very complicated root
> password and a relativley simple, easy to remember user password. In
> Kubuntu, should my user password now be the complicated one because I don't
> have a root password?
...
> It's a great distro but perhaps it needs a health warning for Linux
> newcomers!

Remember, it wouldn't be nearly as confusing for you if you hadn't had to 
learn about root in the first place - if you'd just come from Windows to 
Kubuntu, you'd simply learn that "system commands" have to be prefixed by 
"sudo".  Basically, _any_ privileged account should have a complex password.  
You didn't need to make your personal account the one with full sudo access 
(and that's maybe where that health warning belongs), but since you did, yes 
it should be reasonably difficult for someone to guess the password.
-- 
derek