I'm a newbie and searched a bit and finally need to ask. Just loaded Mandriva 2006 running KDE as my desktop. Security set to STANDARD. If I right click the desktop there are no drop down menus. Is there a way to be able to create links on DT as ROOT?

I know it may be related to the security but this is just a home box behind a firewall so I am not worried. A learning tool if you will.

The root gui user interface is crippled because you are not really supposed to login routinely as root. I suggest using su, kdesu and sudo if you need to have some root privileges as a normal user.

Thanks, I understand what I'm not supposed to do but it would make things earier.

Have you tried using kdesu? It runs any apps as root, so that you don't need to login as root. When I was a newbie, I used it to run konqueror so that I could browse through the filesystem as root or run graphical text editors so that I could make changes to config files. As time progressed, I learnt how to do most sysadmin taks from the command line so don't really need to use any graphical tools as root.

The way I used to get round that, was that when mandrake got to about 10.0 (I think) it made it default that the graphic root account is hidden.

So, if you go into your user account, then kde control centre (configure my desktop ???), at the bottom of the menu you'd normally find system administration>login manager.

Start the login manager and under the main (RHS) pane, there should be an "administrator mode" button. click it and append the root password, then in the users tab, you will see that the root account is "checked" as a hidden user. Uncheck the box and "apply". then when you restart you should see some sort of icon that shows that "it" can be logged into.

As for no right click menu options, you might need to check the mouse settings as there should be a small list - i.e. that's where you would normally make a "link to application" for desktop icons (and as long as your user account has permission to use that app, then you can normally make a "link to application" without going into the root account).

Making icons and things on desktop as root? well you have to make sure you make the icon/shortcut on the users desktop, not the root one and make sure that the user account has permissions to run it as well.

regards

John

Thanks for the tips, Gentlemen. I suppose I can work around the icon on desktop issue. Being a Windows Admin for 10+ years makes it hard to do things differently

which is one of the reasons why I doubt whether I'll ever be able to claim any sort of "expertise" with this "linux lark".

Having meddled with it for about three and a half years, I feel that I'm still just about "competent user" level - not that I give a flying f*** how stuff works really, I just want it too work and not be anything to do with MS!

Good luck

regards

John