Re: 'root'' login vs. 'standard user' login

["Thomas Ribbrock (Design/DEG)" <argathin iname com>]

Lloyd Sumpter writes:
[...] 
>    I know you're not, and thank you. You're doing exactly what should be done:
> warning people that it's a Bad Idea, but letting them do it if they want to. My
> objection was to Star Office, which, unless you do some Serious Hacking DOES
> NOT ALLOW root to run StarOffice (basically, if you're root when you run
> configure, it gives you the "system" configuration rather than the "user"
> configuration. Hence, you can't configure StarOffice for root to use )

I think that's correct behaviour on StarOffice's part. It makes the valid
assumption that on a true multi-user system (and Linux/Unix *is* a true
multi-user system, as opposed to Mac and Win9x (and even partly WinNT)) you
will do administrating when you log in as administrator (i.e. root) and that
you will simply "use" when you log in as user - simple as that.
Besides: Another reason I can see for not running root unless I have to (and
yes, my machines are single user as well and all of them do have a user
account which I use for daily work or even programming) is that if any
program I use goes haywack, it will not be able to trash anything more than
my user account (whoopsy - syntax error in that shell script? I'm sure I
typed rm -i in there and not rm -f...) - which is bad enough but not half as
bad as harming the whole system.


>     I just don't feel like managing a multi-user system when I'm the only user.

Errrm - there's not much "administrating" to setting up a user account
nowadays... A few mouse clicks and a few key strokes with control-panel and
that's it...


> Most of my Linux systems only have one user: root (except of course for the
> "admin" type users like ftp and bin).
>    After all, there's only "root" in Windows, or a Mac, right?

As they are single-user systems you're right. I never liked the idea that
anybody who happens to sit down in front of that machine is able to trash
everything. I personally really like the advantage of Linux over these
systems in this regard. Funny enough, in my experience, I hardly have any
reason to log in as root unless I want to install/change a program/setting -
which I don't do on a daily basis.

My £0.02,

Thomas
-- 
             "Look, Ma, no obsolete quotes and plain text only!"

     Thomas Ribbrock | http://www.bigfoot.com/~kaytan | ICQ#: 15839919
   "You have to live on the edge of reality - to make your dreams come true!"