Why do all the sudo? [was Re: Software updater no longer functional]

[Colin Watson]

On Fri, Jan 27, 2017 at 02:40:45PM +0200, Liam Proven wrote:
> If it's that old, it must have filled a need.
> 
> And if it's now used  by default and ``su'' is deprecated, and has
> been since the release of Mac OS X in March 2001 and the first release
> of Ubuntu in 2004, hey, don't you think there must be a *reason*?
> 
> These days root has no password and can't log in, so ``su'' is no use.
> You are urged to prefix commands with ``sudo'' instead. Why?

I was part of the discussion when Ubuntu decided to go this way.  The
original motivating reason was simply that it meant that we only had to
ask for a single password in the installer rather than two.  It was
never the intent to discourage experienced admins from taking a
different approach if they wanted to, nor specifically to deprecate
"su"; all of that sort of thing is post-hoc rationalisation by others.

That said, I think there's some benefit to presenting a consistent
approach to users, remembering that many people reading advice won't
have that experience behind them, and prefixing commands with sudo where
necessary is a pretty conventional way to do that by this point.

-- 
Colin Watson                                       [cjwatson at ubuntu.com]