Re: root login

[Michael Toomim <toomim@uclink4.berkeley.edu>]

From an interview with the Lindows guy:

Q)
  "Why was it decided that Lindows would always run as 'root' by
  default? That seems like a pretty bad decision to me, and many others
  as it's the number 1 complaint of many Linux users who would otherwise
  like to give Lindows a try, but perhaps we should hear why that
  decision was made.

  Is this how Lindows is going to continue to work in the future? I
  think this is one "feature" of Win9x that would really be better to
  leave in the past."

Robertson)

I think the larger issue here is how do you balance security vs. ease of 
use. We are committed to providing a secure desktop operating system and 
make policy decisions about how to achieve a secure but usable system. 
For example, not plugging a computer into the 'Net would make it really 
secure, but not very usable. We did decide to build in a pre-configured 
firewall because it's largely an invisible security layer that adds 
meaningfully security to the desktop but stays out of the users way. 
Most security compromises are external attacks, not root vs. non-root 
issues.

Historically, multi-user systems made sense when hardware was expensive 
because not everyone could afford a computer and you could leverage the 
cost of expensive machines by creating multiple users and doing time 
sharing. But times have changed and computers are now ultra-affordable 
with PCs starting at $200.

So there's less need to share computers and have multi-user accounts 
with all that overhead and complexity. There aren't “administrators” in 
many of the homes, businesses and schools we are selling to. These are 
personal computers where the owner needs to be able to set the clock, 
change the wallpaper, configure a printer, install a flash drive, or 
load a new piece of software without bumping into nuances of computer 
science.

Take a Microsoft Windows XP or Mac OS X machine out of the box and use 
it and it operates in a similar manner to LindowsOS – the first person 
to touch it can do whatever they want. If we make Linux harder to use 
then other operating systems, users will not embrace it. Users just want 
to get their work done, they don't want to be computer experts and they 
shouldn't have to be. Of course, if they want to add a default password 
or setup multiple accounts and restrict access to their own machine, 
they can of course do it on all of these operating systems, including 
LindowsOS, even though none default that way.