Bug#637452: Lower priority of first user's fullname question

[Joel Rees <joel.rees@gmail.com>]

(Noise from a sometimes user who forgets that the debian list handles
mail correctly, and fails to put the list address in the To: field)

On Fri, Aug 12, 2011 at 1:27 AM, Lennart Sorensen
<lsorense@csclub.uwaterloo.ca> wrote:
> On Thu, Aug 11, 2011 at 05:20:57PM +0100, Colin Watson wrote:
>> On Thu, Aug 11, 2011 at 05:34:30PM +0100, Miguel Figueiredo wrote:
>> > Good question, but the installer just setups the first account, doesn't manage
>> > user's accounts.
>>
>> The installer should set up the first account in a manner that does not
>> require later management simply in order to bring it into sync with how
>> future accounts would be created, especially for such a user-facing
>> thing as the user's full name.
>
> Exactly.
>
> Why should my first account that is most likely mine, not show nicely
> in kdm and gdm and such by default?

I'm not a developer or even a regular user. My opinion is my own. But
this is sort of a favorite topic with me.

In a corporate environment, the user name would not necessarily have
any connection with a real person.

Whether Debian wants to target a corporate environment or not aside,
even a privately owned machine should have an admin account separate
from both root and the regular user's working account. That should
probably be the first account set up.

I ranted on this some years back, on my personal web server where very
few people would end up seeing it, but I'll post a link to the rant
for reference: <http://reiisi.homedns.org/~joel/cs/security/makesafeusers.html>.
Like much on my website, it needs a lot of work, but perhaps it would
provide some food for thought here.

Joel Rees