for everyone whose sick of sudo read this

[Magnus Therning]

On Sun, Jul 03, 2005 at 12:45:28PM -0400, irusun wrote:
>
>As a long time user of Linux, I was quite confused after installing
>Ubuntu - it took me a few hours to figure out what was going on with
>the whole sudo/root thing.  If Ubuntu is going to do something
>radically different like change the nature of the root user (from every
>other distro I've ever used), it should be much more clear up front
>during the installation.
>
>It appears that Ubuntu tried to tackle the issue that many new users to
>Linux would simply use the root account as their personal account
>because it was often inconvenient to do routine system maintenance
>otherwise.

Yes, that's what they are used to from other, often proprietary,
operating systems.

>*nix has its origin in a multi-user environment, often involving dozens
>if not hundreds of users.  With so many remote and sometimes unknown
>logins, security is obviously an issue.  But the reality is that most
>of the people using Ubuntu are just single (or family) users who just
>want an alternative to Microsoft.
>
>The idea that there's rarely a use for root is a complete Utopian Linux
>fantasy.  It's nice to see Ubuntu has made it less necessary to be a
>root user than a lot of other distros, but the root user is a very
>useful thing to have around for involved system administration.

What you are suggesting is that we wait until Longhorn comes out, and
catches on in the M$ part of the world?

You may not be aware of it by M$ is pushing the concept of
least-privileged-user hard for Longhorn. All users will run into it, and
they'll be upset initially, but soon everyone will live with it.

History seems to repeat itself in that M$ introduces 20-year-old
Unix-concepts in Windows and touts it as the best thing since sliced
bread. Then and only then will the general user accept it. Too bad that
users aren't smarter than M$ is in this case...

/M

-- 
Magnus Therning                    (OpenPGP: 0xAB4DFBA4)
magnus at therning.org
http://therning.org/magnus

Software is not manufactured, it is something you write and publish.
Keep Europe free from software patents, we do not want censorship
by patent law on written works.

Increasingly, people seem to misinterpret complexity as sophistication,
which is baffling--the incomprehensible should cause suspicion rather than
admiration.
     -- Niklaus Wirth
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