Typing su/sudo isn't necessary all the time. For common/regular commands, you can setup sudo to allow no-password usage, and and write a wrapper script/shell function to avoid having to type 'sudo'. For example, I use a 'cpufreq' shell wrapper to switch between different cpufreq scaling governors. I just do 'cpufreq o' (ondemand), 'cpufreq p' (performance), and so on.

Obviously not ... but running as ordinary user
doesn't cost me a dime, and the 5 seconds it
takes me to su to root (or do more menial tasks
as ordinary user with sudo w/o a password) are
well worth the extra effort. I have no doubt that
you're backing up important stuff, and that you
don't rm -rf ... but do you know when you're going
to browse to a website that has a day-zero exploit
for your browser, which, when used as root, may open
a back-door to your machine, and make it a drone in
somebodys botnet? Thought not.


And your false sense of security is the material
that makes drones and botnets possible.


Making my point yet again - thanks :}




Cheers,
Tink

Running a X session with "root" is dangerous. You are running way too many apps as root. These apps are under development most of the time and new bug fixes are being released periodically to address many issues and some regarding security. So a small flaw in any one of the app may lead to exploitation thus compromising the whole system. This is why you shouldn't run X as root and this is exactly why windows has so many virus and exploitation problems. Anybody can do anything. The "su" utility is a handy way to switch over to another user (mostly root) where and when you need it. Linux most powerful feature comes from its command line so don't hesitate to learn it. after you "su" to root, you can do anything you want - edit xorg.conf, move your files to any location or even destroy your system with a single rm -rf or chmod all from the command line. However, there's another very good alternative to su'ing, its called sudo. make yourself listed into the sudoers file using the visudo command. give in yourself access to some regular commands that you would like to run as root. you may or maynot want to use passwd, its your choice. Hey! a little typing won't hurt, especially if it saves you from reinstalling you system every other night.

If you must do it from a GUI, somebody already suggested kdesu is a nice way to do it.

It doesn't actually, although "switch user" is correctly describing the command purpose.

Have a look back to my answer to your poll.

Yes, I did fail to mention that in my setup. Thanks for bringing that to my attention:

My corrected statement: There is little danger in running as root on a single user home desktop machine using an external firewall.

That actually that brings up a good point about how this root issue is really detracting from things that *should* be done (real risks), like disabling all services that are not essential because even if you are running as a user, you're not *safe* being connected to the internet. If somebody can exploit a bug in one of your services you are toast whether you are running as root or not.

And the big difference risk wise is that on one hand you are trying to protect yourself from yourself (low risk) and on the other hand you are trying to protect yourself from a willful threat (high risk).

I "dissociate myself" from these comments. Those who really need to know, will just have to guess which of them I agree with.

And that firewall won't permit outgoing traffic on
arbitrary ports? You've locked yourself down to use
21,80, 443? The issue is still that any application
you use to traverse the firewall can theoretically
be exploited. And unless you have a highly expensive
firewall (like a cyberguard TSP or a sidewinder) that
checks known traffic for valid content you can't be
sure, ever. And even those babies don't know all possible
exploits for non-standard apps/ports.

While those statements are quite correct they don't
negate the dangers I mentioned above. Slackware, which
you're using at the moment is reasonably sane in that
respect; but one still shouldn't do mundane things as
root.

Both of which are perfectly valid reasons *not* to
run as root. To me having to assume root temporarily
to do system tasks automatically raises my alertness
to my own activities, and makes me think twice before
I press enter. And by the way: I did "byte myself"
with and rm -rf / once in the "early days", not looking
at the screen and having missed the fact that my capslock
was on and my tab-expansion for the /install directory
hadn't worked. :}


Cheers,
Tink

Well, as much as I hate to admit it. Tink, you've convinced me! I'll set up a user account on my machine.

Thanks for excellent exchange.

Hopefully, I'm seriously on this. In a distro like Slackware, where every other command is "./configure && make && make install", I can understand why someone would run as root fulltime.

Try another distro flavor. I'm not suggesting one in specific, but just try anything not Slack-based. There are much better package managers out there. By not exploring your options, you only hurt yourself.

visudo
tink ALL=ALL NOPASSWD: checkinstall

./configure and make don't require elevated privileges,
and just add /sbin, /usr/sbin to your path, add
checkinstall to sudoers and you're all sweet.



Cheers,
Tink

Thank you very much for this feedback :}

I often feel like preaching to stone here ;}



Cheers,
Tink