PackageKit major annoyances

[Paul W. Frields]

B1;1704;0cOn Sat, Dec 20, 2008 at 01:44:59AM +1030, Tim wrote:
> On Thu, 2008-12-18 at 21:40 +0100, Mark wrote:
> > 3. Oke, mplayer is done installing now and now it asks me to run it..
> > why?
> 
> I've seen this with one package (it ran after installation), and it's a
> really incredibly dumb idea!
> 
> Why?  Because on Linux, you install as root (you have to), and then the
> package is getting run as the root user.  Apart from the security
> implications of that, you don't normaly run the application as root
> (unless you practice bad computing habits), so whatever you do now will
> not apply when you later on run it as yourself.  You'll end up painting
> users into the run-as-root corner, like Windows does.
> 
> Even if you could intelligently, post installation, switch away from
> root back to the user who started installing things, do you really want
> thirty recently installed programs run to set them up?  I don't!  And
> what about running them for all of the the other users on the system.
> 
> Which dimwit implemented that sort of behaviour?

Can we please carry on the conversation without personal insults?
Please, folks, a modicum of civility -- let's keep in mind that there
are flesh-and-blood people who write this software, and we all get to
use it for free.  Criticism is fine, invective is not.

-- 
Paul W. Frields                                http://paul.frields.org/
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  http://redhat.com/   -  -  -  -   http://pfrields.fedorapeople.org/
  irc.freenode.net: stickster @ #fedora-docs, #fedora-devel, #fredlug
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