A way to mess up recovery mode logins! Comments please?

[David]

On Mon, Jan 16, 2006 at 07:02:32PM +0000, Colin Watson wrote:
> On Mon, Jan 16, 2006 at 01:45:13PM -0500, Phillip Susi wrote:
> > Colin Watson wrote:
> > >There's nothing wrong with wanting to set a root password.
> > 
> > There is no reason to set a root password.
> 
> Lots of people want to do this for reasons of site policy, mistrust of
> complicated authentication frameworks, desire to ensure that people

<snip>
 
> It's funny how an installer user interface design decision has turned
> into an article of religious faith a year and a half down the line. :-)
> 

It would save a lot of confusion if the installer said something like:

"Root password must be explicitly set if required, otherwise use sudo."

Even now there are still Ubuntu newbies searching for the root password 
and asking on this list. That's what *nix people are used to, so the lack 
of a root password is confusing. A little bit of information would save a 
lot of hot air.

On OSX it isn't a problem because the Mac user base never looked for root 
anyway.

regards...

David.