Re: sudo vs. su (was Re: new to list, new to debian, new to linux)

[Paul E Condon <pecondon@mesanetworks.net>]

On 2009-05-22_18:19:19, dwain wrote:
> On Fri, May 22, 2009 at 6:09 PM, Douglas A. Tutty <dtutty@vianet.ca> wrote:
> 

Hi, dwain

I went back in the archives and read your original post. It is pretty
clear to me from that post that you are a single user working on your
own computer.  There is no sysadmin to help or hinder you. You are
your own sysadmin. If you screw up, it is not a firing offense, it is
just a learning experience.  So, have at it. Other distros try much
too hard to 'protect' their users.  Gnome tries to hide how the system
really works, IMHO. Ubuntu is Debian without the transparency, but
with cutesy alliterative names. Sudo is really not a substitute for
su. It is something the boss sysadmin foists on the grunt sysadmins in
a large shop. But you are you, not boss, not grunt.

Look at the documentation at debian.org. There is a lot of really good
stuff that in other distributions is stuff that 'the user shouldn't
have to know' (and therefore we won't tell him). But not in Debian. In
Debian there is a clear possibility of becoming a real expert by
self-study (with some mentoring when you ask for it). But debian-user
let you down here by grabbing your thread and turning it into a
discussion about how the run the sysadmin dept. of a large
organization. It's pretty clear to me that that isn't what you were
asking.

Go do your thing. 

I've recently set up a second computer in my home, an old pentium
III. It runs approx (a proxy specifically designed to be a local cache
of Debian packages), and adzapper (a nifty thingy that eliminates the
paid advertising clutter on your web browser). If you once do an
install of Debian through approx, all subsequent installs throuch
approx go MUCH FASTER. No matter the speed of you internet connection,
it is less than 100MHz Ethernet, which is about as slow as you can get
a local Ethernet to go these days. With this in place, and disk
partitions set up so that /home is on a separate partition that doesn't
get touched in an install, it hardly matters what you do as root.
Just a short interlude in which you can contemplate why you messed up.
No need to explain it to anyone. 

Cheers,
-- 
Paul E Condon           
pecondon@mesanetworks.net