On Tue, Jul 20, 2004 at 01:43:30PM +0100, Brett Parker wrote:
*EWWW*. Why can't they do something more akin to knoppix, which though sick and wrong, at least doesn't run all the system as root but instead as the Knoppix user, who then has sudo access (with no password) to root. Cleaner, would give lindows as much flexibility and would mean that netscape and other things work (that check that they're not being run by UID=0...) does this mean that the lindows lot hacked lots of the software to stop that from being an issue?
*Truly appalled by the idea of everything running as root*
yup, <AOL>
What I don't understand is why (some people will probably be horrified at my suggestion now) is that these desktop newbie centered distros don't generate a secure password (why not perhaps 4 or 5 and let you choose one of them with a single click of the mouse?) when you install and display it on screen and then print a message saying "this is your root password, write it down and keep it in a very safe place. You will need this password to maintain your machine and if you allow anyone else to know this password then they could break into your machine and access your data" (or something similar) and just ask for this password when running package installers and configuration options etc.
Then at around the same time you can force them to create a normal user account (ok, this is for a bit of desktop software aimed at the desktop, I am not advocating this approach for all distros) and suggest a few secure passwords at them?
Adam