change permissions to copy pictures into backgrounds

[Jake Maier]

Aware of the danger that I'll be shunned from this list for the rest of my
live I still have a question on this issue. No I don't want to have naked
people on my wallpaper but I am the only one to use my computer. There is
nobody in my house except my cat, and I think that there are a whole lot of
people out there who use their computer as a single user with none around to
share it. 
Why can't there be a simple bypass of all the unnecessary security for these
in my opinion quite common situations. I understand that there are necessary
security issues which apply everywhere.

I just switched to Ubuntu leaving windows because I got so annoyed with it.
There are many things already I see on Ubuntu where I was pleasantly
surprised, but I didn't understand why Windows couldn't deal better with
single users and I don't quite understand it that Ubuntu has not an easy
bypass for single users.
I hope keeping this issue alive does not annoy anyone.
Thanks for your time
Jake

-----Original Message-----
From: ubuntu-users-bounces at lists.ubuntu.com
[mailto:ubuntu-users-bounces at lists.ubuntu.com] On Behalf Of Gilles Gravier
Sent: Wednesday, May 09, 2012 7:09 AM
To: ubuntu-users at lists.ubuntu.com
Subject: Re: change permissions to copy pictures into backgrounds

Hi!

On 09/05/2012 11:55, Thomas Blasejewicz wrote:
>
> (2012/05/09 15:11), Patrick Asselman wrote:
>> It's always good to ask questions :-)
>>
>> Part of the answer probably lies in the background of Linux. It is 
>> designed as a multi-user system. That is why security of files is 
>> always used. Think of a system with 50 users, and 3 of those area 
>> allowed to change system settings. You don't want all of those users 
>> changing pictures in a shared directory. This is where the ownership 
>> of files comes in, and users and user-groups.
>
> THANK YOU!!!
> Now, THAT explains a lot and makes it easy to accept, that I cannot do 
> here what I originally wanted to do.

Imagine that one of those 50 users decides they want a porn wallpaper and
puts it in the system folder. Now imagine that out of those 50 users, say 20
or so are very young kids, and that each of them wants to put a nice and
friendly wallpaper on their own home screen and start browsing the list of
available system wallpapers. Imagine explaining that to a judge afterwards.

No. You don't really want that. You want only responsible (in the sense of
responsible of managing the machine, and making judgement calls as to what
is appropriate to share) to be able to do things that impact all other
users. And you want these actions to be accounted for (logged).

Hence the permissions issue. Not an issue. A design feature for system
security and integrity.

Gilles.

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