hi-

i tried to make some sense of this tonight and cant.
what i did is look at a media player on my desktop.
i dont think i have messed with it since installing
the o/s.

it is a root permission application.

however some applications can be run as a user
with less permissions in the group user.

is it ok to do both. run some as a regular user
and some as a user with less rights?

is there a general rule to go by?

i know that i am absolutely not suppose to log in
the desktop as root (everyone knows that though).

i know the rights like on a web host for changing
file and folder permissions and doing stuff like chmod. it is just this part of the picture that i dont get.

thanks for any pointers,
3rdshiftcoder

I find your question a little bit unclear, but will try to give you an idea about root permissions.

Assuming that this machine is your desktop computer, you would theoretically want to be able to use something like a media player without needing special permissions. If root permission is required to run a media player, there is likely a problem with the permissions of the CDROM or DVDROM drive from which the media is being accessed.

It is OK to run different applications with varying user permissions, but in general, you will want most applications, like media players, web browser, paint programs and such, to be able to be used as your regular user account.

Things like the 'parted' utility, or known as 'Gparted', which is a disk partitioning tool, always must be run as root, and often there is no exception to this, because of the potentially destructive nature of such tools-- a mistake with gparted could cost you a filesystem or a partition, so any old regular user is not allowed to run it.

If this doesn't help you understand the situation, please provide a bit more information, such as the name of the media player in question, as well as why/how you need to run it as root, and what if anything happens when you try to use it as your regular user account.

Cheers,

Sasha

http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/2114

i found the answer here

ok. that explains it better. i will have to practice.
it will be nice not to have to log in as root as many times
if all goes well. i admit i may have logged in as root in a shell
to run a program once or twice :-)

thanks,
3rdshiftcoder

ok sasha -
i just saw your thread. thanks for the advice.
so it is "usually not". that works.

thanks for helping.

i probably can run the media player as a regular user.
i noticed my other media player is run as a regular user.

i will start keeping a better eye on this.
i want to get better this time and keep using linux
without quitting again.

thanks again,
3rdshiftcoder

Glad you were able to find some more info to help you understand the situation.
I just wanted to mention too, that logging into a shell as root, or using su or sudo, are usually required to do system maintenance, installing packages on the system, upgrading, etc.. The key is not to RUN as root all the time on the desktop, but rather to use the tools provided like su and sudo, to do tasks that require higher permissions, without the need to actually log in completely as root.

I have no idea how many times per day I open a root console to do something, but it is a LOT! This is because half the fun of my system, for me anyhow, is fiddling and tweaking stuff rather than just browsing the web or sending email or playing music. I *work on* the system a lot, so while I am always logged in as "me" (Sasha the regular user) I often use su to gain root permissions so I can alter system files and so on.

Have fun!
SVA