Vote for new Ubuntu Feature---Let's try it again --- and without getting all religious about it

[Derek Broughton]

Jeffrey F. Bloss wrote:

> Chanchao wrote:
> 
>> All the man says is that at this point he prefers not to have to save
>> this file somewhere where he can save it, exit the application, use
>> gksudo to open it again, re-apply the changes, save again.
... 
>> access rights after entering the sudo password: great.  Or if a script
>> is called that saves the file as a temp file, closes the application
>> and re-opens it again after authenticating as administrator:  Just as
>> great.
>> 
>> That's all.  No Unix-security-blasphemy takes place.
> 
> Nonsense. You're suggesting that every application be allowed to
> determine who is and is not permitted to act as an administrator
> independent of the OS. That's not blasphemy, it's castration. You're
> asking that the entire Linux/Unix authentication mechanism be
> undermined.

Don't be silly - applications _do_ do this, and as Chanchao says it isn't
Unix blasphemy. They _don't_ decide who can be an administrator - that's up
to the administrator, either by giving out root passwords or configuring
sudo. Kpackage, for instance, allows you to do all the user-accessible
things that apt-get can do, but if you want to actually do an install it
pops up a password prompt (unless you have it both configured to use SSH
and ssh is configured to allow passwordless root logins).  It's possible
because programs _are_ permitted to execute other programs, and that
program can conceivably be sudo or a counterpart.

However, it isn't ever going to be something the system will do generically,
and the OPs best option is to make it a wishlist item for gedit.
-- 
derek