[ubuntu-us-ut] Ubuntu's default groups

[Aaron Toponce]

Christer Edwards wrote:
> If the users are put into the widest range of groups to begin with
> there shouldn't be any reason why they'd be running usermod -G and
> screwing things up. Also, group membership is important for access to
> the hardware. On my Arch machine I forgot to put myself into the audio
> and optical group and couldn't use my CD drive or listen to audio.

This is odd to me. Why should you be a member of your group to access
hardware? Isn't that the kernel's responsibility? On my Debian machine:

uid=1000(aaron) gid=1000(aaron) groups=119(fuse),1000(aaron)

I'm in the fuse group, so I can mount fuse filesystems locally to one of
my directories without root privileges. However, I can still access
audio cds, play music, access my attached printer, watch videos, mount
thumb drives, and everything else just fine. I'm failing to see the
advantage adding myself to 13 groups provides.

Now, maybe this is standard, tacking on 13 groups to the default user.
However, here's Solaris:

uid=1001(aaron) gid=1(other)

... and HP-UX:

uid=106(aaron) gid=20(users)

... and RHEL:

uid=503(aaron) gid=503(aaron) groups=503(aaron)

However, pulling up Mac OS X is completely different:

uid=502(aaron) gid=20(staff)
groups=20(staff),402(com.apple.sharepoint.group.1),204(_developer),100(_lpoperator),98(_lpadmin),81(_appserveradm),80(admin),79(_appserverusr),61(localaccounts),12(everyone),403(com.apple.sharepoint.group.2),401(com.apple.access_screensharing)

Really odd group accounts too, but whatever. Not sure how much is
actually necessary, like "com.apple.sharepoint.group.1". So, maybe
Ubuntu is trying to mimic Mac OS X? I'm still failing to see the
advantages though.

> If you want stuff to "just work" and not require any manual
> configuration, use Ubuntu. If you want a stripped, strict
> UNIX-standard system maybe Ubuntu isn't the right answer for your
> system.

I'm not looking for any answer to my needs. I've already found it, and
Ubuntu fits in that picture. What I'm asking is why the change/need,
when I can easily do everything on Debian, being in 2 groups, that takes
13 to do on Ubuntu.

Consider for a moment Fedora moving X11 from tty7 to tty1. It was a
change that brought no apparent advantage, and broke tons, and tons of
documentation. The developers were just tired of it on tty7, and thought
it was time for a change.

If a change warrants a strong technical advantage, or clearly brings
about great benefits, then by all means make the change, but what does
moving X11 from tty7 to tty1 or putting a user in 13 default groups do
for the system? I'm not griping as much as I really want to know.

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