Administrator log in for Linux Mint
 

Purchased a computer with Linux Mint installed and changed the password since the one that came with it was pretty generic. I now cannot sign on as administrator, the administrator button on the menu no longer offers a new password option, I have attempted to delete some unwanted fonts through computer/file system/USR/share/fonts true type and have been informed that permission is denied, I am not the owner, and you are not the owner so you cannot change these permissions.

Probably it is the same password as your user. but the file browser is not running as root so you cant delete these files through the graphical interface.

you can delete these files from the command line by issuing the sudo command combined with the rm command like
it is a Linux security thing

By deleting these font files you will not be freeing that much space in your hard drive thought so better just leave them be and try to free up space by deleting some more bigger files under the home user directory, which you can do from the file browser (Graphical interface).

Here are a couple of relevant tutorials from Psychocats:

http://www.psychocats.net/ubuntu/resetpassword
http://www.psychocats.net/ubuntu/fixsudo

Hope that helps, good luck!

ps Why do you want to delete true type fonts? They are very useful for sharing documents and websites with Mac/Apple users! Also, generally in Linux, we do not delete system-owned files willy-nilly. Rather, we use the "package manager" or "software center" to remove the package, which then cleans up the files in places like /usr so that you do not have to edit critical system folders (like /usr) directly!

Are you still using the same user that the computer came with? Generally, the way Mint and other systems which use sudo by default work is the first user created during install is granted root privileges. Did you create another user? Did you give that user sudo privileges? How did you change the password?

I went to the menu, chose Administrator, and brought up a page that gave me the options for a new user and password. I reset the user and password but did not give sudo (does that equate to administrator and / or owner?) privileges. The original user name and password might work, but when I sign on the username is filled in with no option to enter the original username. The page that was available in Administrator to enter a new password is no longer available when I go to the Administrator icon. The log in option is available, but not the change option.

I highly recommend you read the "fixsudo" tutorial (with screenshots!!!) I linked to in Post #3. :)

It explains the importance of the "admin" group, how to tell whether or not you are in it, and how to add yourself if you aren't.

Mint has no root user and, frankly, new users ought not to try to create one.

The standard user can temporarily escalate his or her privileges to root by prefacing the command with sudo, as shown above. The user will be prompted for the *user's* password (not root's password; there is no root account.)

If you maintained the *original* username and just gave that account a new password, you should have no issues.

Also, there is no "Adminstrator" button in Mint. I assume you mean the "Adminstration" menu entry??

Mint does have a root user--every *nix does--the root password is just not shared with the person who owns and operates the computer.

It's quite easy to fix this--I consider it a flaw. I do it routinely on distros that have that ghastly Ubuntu sudo fetish.

Don't want to get into a pointless semantic discussion, but, you can't log in as root in a default install of Ubuntu or Ubuntu derivatives like Mint.

Yes, you can change that. To me, that fact is not germane to the OP's question and enabling root on Mint is not really an appropriate response to a question from someone with no Linux experience.

Changing the password of the original user should not have impacted that user's ability to use sudo as intended in Mint. Using a file manager launched as that user to delete files will obviously generate an authorization error. The correct response was provided in the second post in this thread.

"Delete the files from /usr with 'sudo rm'" is not the best-practice for uninstalling Debian/Ubuntu/Mint packages (like ttf-mscorefonts-installer), no matter how you slice it.

What snowpine said--and I should have caught this.

Anything installed with a package manager should be removed with a package manager. If the fonts in question are part of a larger package, it's best just to not use them, not to remove them selectively.