Re: root login
On Sat, 2003-04-26 at 22:52, Jeff Waugh wrote:
> <quote who="Michael Toomim">
>
> > Jeff Waugh wrote:
> > >That's GDM not letting you log in then, which is a good thing. :-) Always
> > >use X / GNOME / KDE as a normal user, not root.
> >
> > Why is this a decidedly "good thing"? Many other distributions and OS's
> > let users log into the graphical interface as root equivalents, and I
> > don't see how it can possibly be that big of a security risk.
>
> It is far easier to 'fuck things up' in a GUI than it is on the command
> line. Deleting /dev or /usr in a file manager, for instance, or even just
> moving them.
This of course raises the question of why people are able to do those
kinds of things by default. Windows XP makes you go to difficulty to
even see these kinds of "system" files, much less delete them. I think
that's a rather good idea. (When was the last time anyone looked at
/dev/ in Nautilus?)
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