very basic about initial install

[Mario Vukelic]

On Sat, 2008-04-26 at 12:57 -0500, reader at newsguy.com wrote:
> Once I started trying to use the new install I began to see how
> crippled it was in terms of doing things the unix/linux way,
> established over decades of linux and unix use.  And use of numerous
> distribution over the years.

It's not crippled at all. And Linux distros have changed over time,
partly to become more complicated in that your command line usage needs
to tie in with the rest of the system. That said, every distro I used
(sine 95 or so) has required to observe its idiosyncrasies, e.g., to
preserve one's changes over system updates. 


> Some other distros also hide the command line 

How does Ubuntu hide the command line? Isn't the terminal readily
available in Applications > Accessories or at the virtual terminals?

<snip>
> Apparently `sudo' is that way with Ubuntu, but only if your network
> dns is able to `find' your machine.  Or at least that appears to be
> the failure message when I attempted to use sudo to access root on a
> recent desktop install of ubuntu inside a vmware on MS vista.
> 
> It seems like really poor design to have complicated and possibly no
> access to a root terminal.  Why not just establish a root passwd
> during install....? I can't imagine why designers would have opted to
> make that difficult.

There are reasons that have been discussed to death. And enabling the
root accound is a one-liner. Read
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RootSudo