p3aul
did you log out and log back in again?????
or reboot ?

For some reason you need to reboot to get those up there.

Having spent a lot of time on Ubuntu Forums, I think I can address this quite valid concern.

1. Ubuntuforums is the OFFICIAL support forum for the Ubuntu project. It is not a public "town square" forum for 1st-amendment-protected discourse, but rather a privately-hosted forum where all members agree to a code of conduct and terms of use. By registering, you give the moderators permission to close threads, delete your posts, and otherwise moderate the forum as they see fit.

2. Ubuntuforums is not one-on-one support (you can get that through http://www.ubuntu.com/business/services/overview) but rather many-to-many. This means your question is not just being answered for your benefit; it is also archived so that other users who have the same question in the future can search and read the answer. Moderators have to weigh whether the discussion benefits the community as a whole, not just your individual request for information.

Put these two facts together, and you have the reason for the policy: login-as-root is officially deprecated by the Ubuntu project, and the forum moderators believe that hosting a how-to-log-in-as-root tutorial on their forum is not of benefit to the community, many of whom are first-time Linux user who might not fully understand the security risks.

An analogy would be the official Toyota forums. Yes, it is possible to disable the airbag on your Toyota automobile. Is Toyota obligated to host a how-to on their private forum? Of course not!

I think the official wiki page on the subject (https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RootSudo) says it best:

In other words, by posting this information on the Ubuntu community forums, you are in essence asking the community to support something that they believe is unsupportable.

LinuxQuestions of course is not officially affiliated with Ubuntu, which is why you may discuss the question freely here. My advice is "don't do it" but I also believe in your freedom.

@snowpine
Very well put.

Yes I see your point and theirs. Ubuntu is very popular for first time users as an alternative to windows(Thank God we have alternatives!) because it is so much like windows. I can see that Ubuntu is very paranoid because they don't want to lose that popularity. It helps to keep the donations coming in.

I wasn't aware of this paranoia or the fact that they planned to eliminate the root concept itself when I chose Ubuntu or I might have reconsidered.

You can cause catastrophe any time and any where. To demonstrate, I wished to prevent the lost of this rather lengthy post so I right-clicked and chose select-all but instead of choosing copy like I intended, my hand slipped and instead chose paste! wiped out my entire post! Now why didn't Firefox foresee that and disabled the command?

To me the spirit of the internet is unrestrained. It's about people giving freely of their time an talent. It's about people like you, giving your advice for free. Despite having worked with computers for 40 years, I'm not a computer professional. To me it's a hobby. I don't know everything but it's a goal I constantly strive for.

Because I dared mention root on Ubuntu sanctioned forum I was given a warning. When I accessed the site again I got a notice saying I was banned supposedly for daring to mention it here on this site. There are spies and conspiracies everywhere!

It is not "paranoia" to say "We do not recommend or support logging into the GUI as root." You are free to agree or disagree with this recommendation, of course, but it is not baseless paranoia.

Now if you were banned from Ubuntu Forums because of a post here, that's a little extreme IMHO.

If you'd like to change root's password, use:

You can log in as root by either using root's password:

Or, if you don't want to use root's password, you can use your own with sudo:

Please note that you must be in the sudoers file to use the command. Usually the administrator user on Ubuntu machines is in the sudoers file, but if you need to add more people, you can use visudo to add more users. Find this section:

And add

There's a bit of a twist, though... you need to be root or use the sudo command to run visudo...

IMHO They are paranoid there, because that's paranoid thinking. Just like my example with the copy and paste command. You can't possibly guard against everything. That IS paranoia. But like I said, I'm not going to play their game. I'm not the one insisting they play by MY rules, they are. They can take their ball and go home if they want to. I've found a new park! I will continue to use Ubuntu because I've got so much time and software installs invested in it. I like the way it looks. I use Gnome 2, its ascetically pleasing to the eye. Besides all that, I restarted Ubuntu, logged in as root and messed around a bit. I'm satisfied now. But I like the new playground to much to go back to the old.
Thanks,
Paul

I, too, think that their behavior is strange.

You, may, find that the shift from G2 to G3 is not to your liking. I would suggest that you try some other desktop environments, now, so that when the time comes that you have to upgrade you have a choice for what you do.

You can have as many of the buggers on any install that you want (and your disk has room for). I suggest xfce. I don't like KDE myself but it is a very much liked and popular one (sometimes it is on top and sometimes Gnome is). All of those are in your repo, check synaptic, plus some more.

Any you install will show up in the bottom panel of your login page under "session" and you can choose what you want at that time.

Hey, Thanks widget! I didn't know that. i will have to load all I can install on my harddrive. This should be another question I know, but since we were on the subject of root, I have did something everyone warned me against! I did finally logon as root, I looked but I didn't touch or change anything, but now my external harddrive only appears when I log on as root. I much prefer it as before. I just don't know how to make it visible under my default username. I know it must be something I'll have to as root but I want to proceed with caution. Any Ideas?
Thanks,
Paul

That is very strange. If you right click on the drive in your left panel of Nautilus and then click on the "mount" option, it should mount it after asking for your password (root password if you set that up).

If you have the "disk utility" installed it should mount it for you. I think it should be in Applications>System>Disk Utility. If not it is in your repo;
In Debian it mounts internal drives automatically after their being mounted that way.

All my external drives are always mounted no matter what.

You might try, just out of curiosity, booting with the external switched off and turn it on after you log in.

OK I rebooted and everything is fine now. Whew! After I logged in as root at a restart I guess switching user back to p3aul caused the problem. I could see the drive as root but not as p3aul. Moverover, when I tried to change the ex's permissions for p3aul it wouldn't let me. Even as root! Oh well, my time of experimentation is over and I'm satisfied. Did download Kde and xfce. Still like Gnome2 better though. I like the taskbars at top and bottom. In windows you only had one and they shared with the system tray. Are you saying that i might not be able to run Gnome2 when Ubuntu upgrades to 11.10 ?
Paul

You can make Xfce have two panels.

You will not be able to run Gnome2 when Ubuntu upgrades to, as it already has, to 11.04. There is the option to install the Gnome DE. This will give you Gnome2 for a little while.

Gnome is upgrading to Gnome3 with Gnome Shell as the default DE. This does come with the gnome-fallback package. This is for folks without the hardware to run compositing. Gnome Fallback can be used by anyone however. It is a panel type DE. It is very much not the panels you are using.

Gnome Shell with some extensions is much better than the castrated panels of gnome-fallback.

I would look at Gnome Shell and the ones you have installed.

Xfce is quite different than Gnome but it has its points. It also has tips that can be allowed to popup each time you boot in. They are pretty handy for a while.

Xfce4 is pretty nice. I am pretty sure that is my default DE when GS becomes Gnomes default DE. I am on Debian Testing (currently Wheezy) and Gnome, of coarse was the default at installation. I recently, after playing with another similar installation, installed Xfce here. I am using it to get familiar and comfortable with it.

As a long time Gnome user (Ubuntu 8.04 to now) I must say that it is pretty easy to find things that I like a lot on it. Haven't rebooted for the last 3 days and am still on Xfce4. Becoming very comfortable.

You need to explore the possibilities of the Xfce panels carefully. It is not real obvious but you can put just about anything you want on the top panel as well as the "bottom" panel (mine is on the right side). You have to right click on the bottom panel to get to "panel preferences". This will open with "panel 2" listed at the top of the dialog box. This can be changed to "panel 1".

You can't just add an icon to the top panel but you can add a launcher and then go to its preferences and make it do all sorts of nice things. I have one, for instance, that shows as the gnome-alsamixer with an arrow on the side. I can launch the mixer and then click on the arrow and launch rhythmbox.

You can add a bunch of things to any launcher on either panel. I have Iceweasel (FF) and Icedove (TB) on the Iceweasel launcher on my bottom panel.

I have been used to groups of launchers on my gnome panels (I have both on top on my Gnome DE). Am still sorting out what groups I want per launcher here.

But I have 11.04 AND Gnome2. I've heard that Gnome3 will be installed for 11.10. I'm happy with Natty, but I didn't like the Unity desktop, so I switched back to Gnome. I think they call this Ubuntu Classic. I like the version of Ubuntu and Gnome that I'm using now. I have loaded a bunch of software and I want to keep this version. I know of people who are still using there older versions of Ubuntu. At some time in the future will
my copy of Ubuntu quit working?