Re: help

[Chris Bannister <mockingbird@earthlight.co.nz>]

On Wed, Feb 02, 2011 at 11:59:28AM +0000, Camaleón wrote:
> Hum... if I interpreted correctly your words, you think "sudo" is 
> intended for non-expert users and I don't think so, but the opposite: 
> "sudo" (as I see) is for people who know what involves and what it means 
> and not many newbies know very well how permissions are managed in their 
> systems and don't care much on security considerations.
> 
> In brief: if you know what "sudo" is for, you should not have any problem 
> to configure it ;-)

If you know what is for then you'd know to put sudo before any command
that you should execute as root.

But Ubuntu configures it automatically AIUI and there is the occassional
Ubuntu user asking questions on *this* list where the advice "sudo
<whatever>" will work but may not be the correct advice for an Ubuntu
system.

But for a new Debian user (either an ex Windows or ex Ubuntu user), the
advice "sudo <whatever>" won't work[1] and just may confuse the poor
bugger.

There used to be a time when commands to be executed as a normal user
would be preceeded by a '$' and commands to be executed as root would be
preceeded by a '#'. This is a safer method and makes all the problems I can
forsee non existant[2]


[1] Unless they choose expert install from the Squeeze installer. But
    then it is their choice to use sudo, and not us assuming they have
    it configured.

[2] - An Ubuntu user won't complain that their system is now buggered
      because of the "help" they got from this list.

    - A new user will learn the difference between being root and just a
      normal user.

-- 
"Religion is excellent stuff for keeping common people quiet."
   -- Napoleon Bonaparte