low-hanging fruit

[Jon Nettleton]

On 8/22/07, Jesse Keating <jkeating at redhat.com> wrote:
> On Wed, 22 Aug 2007 10:18:52 -0400
> "Owen Taylor" <otaylor at redhat.com> wrote:
>
> > I have a *strong* opinion here that it's *never*, *ever* right to ask
> > the user a question when installing or removing a package. A question
> > is going to be of the form:
> >
> >  A) This operation may trash your system [detail that the user doesn't
> > understand removed]. Proceed?
> >
> >  B) The package that you are installing might be created by an evil
> > haxor and do bad things [details that the user doesn't understand
> > removed]. Proceed?
>
> For me it's not asking the users these questions, it's asking the user
> for their password to proceed (with a timeout).  OSX does this, and we
> seem to base a lot of our "good usability" on what they do.  If a
> friend wants to just look at their web mail, why should they switch
> users to a guest account?  Why can't I just hand them the laptop and
> let them use the already running browser?  If something popped up to
> install software I don't want them to be able to just have it happen, I
> want the password prompt to show up so that if they aren't me, or
> weren't me that provided a password in the last 5 minutes, I don't want
> them to be able to do it.  I don't think this is unreasonable as a
> default everywhere.  It's just like we made the local user(s) sudo
> enabled and rely upon that sudo mechanism to accomplish system level
> tasks.
>

The other half of this is it should not just be the users password
that is acceptable.  We need to make sure an admin can sit down at a
machine and perform these operations without mucking around with
profiles or switch terminals.  This functionality is becoming more and
more necessary, where children have a restricted desktop.  We want to
make it very easy for parents (admins) to install a new game for their
kids in a straight forward manner.