set up a root password

[Gordon Schulz]

On Tue, 05 Aug 2008 11:07, cliff weisgerber <cliff at kliphy.com> wrote:

> I have been a UN*X guru since the PDP days of Bell Labs and then Berkeley
> and then...and then linux.  My first experience with kubuntu left me
> wondering how to get root access, which is necessary.  I don't think it is
> unwise to offer this info.  More like it is unwise to try to hide root
> access.  If folks blow their system up, so be it.  Hopefully, lesson
> learned.
Well, imho it depends on the target audience of the distribution.
xUbuntu tries to mainly target your average Joe User ranging from total
noob to your average user to the poweruser needing a stable distribution
on his work rig or server, so pretty much everyone. At least that's what I 
always thought is Canonical's mission statement. It's good people don't
mindlessly carry their Windows mentality of running everything as
Adminstrator/Superuser over and actually have to type in some sort of prefix.
Things are different in more 'generic' distributions like Gentoo, pure Debian
or w/e. You are expected to know what root is and what it can mean
typing in rm -rf *. Rest assured, I could sleep a little better when I
installed Kubuntu on my parents' first laptop. :)
-- 
Gordon.