There was a lengthy discussion, but within it I don't remember anyone
detailing the numerous reasons (or any reason at all) executing plain
'su' is a "really bad idea," (where I'm reading "really bad idea" to
mean having unintended and very detrimental consequences to the
hapless user).
I think i missed that discussion, will catch that later.
I would like to suggest that instead of showing only "Doing plain 'su' is a really bad idea for many reasons" on the NEWS file, one should add some external reference on why it is a bad idea, because most probably the user using only "su" is not aware of why it's bad and is left empty handed on the reasons (obviously they can search online, but that doesn't mean we can't show the reasoning behind that on NEWS).
I'd really like if Stretch users also received an external URL for reference or a proper explanation on why this is bad during the Stretch->Buster upgrade.
There was a lengthy discussion, but within it I don't remember anyone
detailing the numerous reasons (or any reason at all) executing plain
'su' is a "really bad idea," (where I'm reading "really bad idea" to
mean having unintended and very detrimental consequences to the
hapless user).
I don't think it's a good idea to expect users to search for that discussion when they see the NEWS file, we should assume that at the least they will continue to try using "su" and fallback to "su -" when something goes wrong, without ever looking for the reasons (and that is what is actually happening with Brazilian users right now).