Toshiba Satellite 4090CDT + sudo ideas

[Robert Wittams]

I just installed Ubuntu (Warty) on my old laptop. ( 400Mhz Celeron. )

There were only two problems:
	The graphics card has only 2.5megs of ram. So XFree86 chose 800x600 at 
24bit which doesn't use the whole laptop screen. I changed DefaultDepth 
to 16 - this allowed the use of 1024x768 which is the whole screen. I 
think it is still necessary to acknowledge the use of non-TrueColour 
displays - especially on LCDs without integrated stretching, as use of 
screen real estate is more important than colour fidelity....


	The wireless card wasn't detected due to a lack of info in the config 
files. It is an SMC 2632W V2 which is a rebadged atmel. The driver is 
included in the kernel 2.8 package. So I added the following lines to 
/etc/pcmcia/config

-----------------------------
device "atmel_cs"
   class "network" module "atmel_cs"

card "SMC 2632W V2"
   manfid 0x01bf, 0xb301
   bind "atmel_cs"
-----------------------------


Maybe these could be added to the pcmcia package, and then pushed 
upstream. I think having this detected is useful in the default install.

Other than that, everything went great. It also installed fine on a 
desktop PC with an Athlon 800Mhz and a Matrox G400. I look forward to 
Hoary!
--------------------

One suggestion that I might make is tighter integration between the 
gnome version of "sudo" and the window manager (metacity). Could we put 
an unforgeable border around windows from processes running as root and 
also the "give me your password" window?

Also more sudo-helper programs would be nice : eg a separate program to 
install firefox extensions for the whole machine. ( Maybe this could 
even automatically create a .deb package from the .xpi and install that? 
This could then be superseded by real packaged versions of the extension 
if the naming is chosen consistently.... This could be done for other 
psuedo packages too - e.g. python & perl modules )

I really like the sudo-for-everything model, and would like to see it 
extended as far as possible.

Perhaps it should be made very easy for any user to create a throwaway 
"subservient" user account, and run  mail attachments or a web browser 
from it. An authenticated (ie password dialog) way of moving any 
downloaded files from here to their "real" home directory could also be 
provided. This would limit any possible exploits of these things... and 
perhaps curb claims than linux is soon to face an onslaught of viruses 
(without the current complexities of SELinux).


Thanks
Robert Wittams