Hello, m_a_b,

Permissions can be annoying at first but there're great for security.
If you want to change them you need to type "su" to root in a terminal. If you want to change permissions in KDE (is it the case?) you can run KUser or sth like that (Sorry I've removed KDE) or you can run Konqueror from the command line after doing "su". So Konqueror will be run by root and you'll be able to change file permissions by right-clicking on a file or a dir, selecting "properties", and work from there.
Same thing if you want to run an editor as root (in order to edit a config file for instance): su the type gvim /path to the file, and there your are: gvim is launched, and the file open ready for you to edit.

When you log in you usually log into X as a user, and this is the safest way. You may want to log in as root if you want to setup OpenOfffice.org for diffrent users for instance. Usually you don't need to log in as root. If you do don't get connected to the internet while logged in as root : bad for security.
If you need to get connected to the internet to apt-get for instance do it as su (so after logging in as user). And "exit" as soon as you don't need the connection any longer.

Permissions can be set up one way for a few minutes and then set up another way. For instance Mozilla calendar won't install because my permissions aren't right. I can "open" permissions so that the Calendar can install and "close" them again after install.

Now if anyone knows where to find extensive documentation on permissions and security, especially on how to chmod, chown, chgrp at one go, or on various files, and on how to set up permissions for borwsers and email clients, so that it's both safe and you can still get email or get newsgroup subscription and emails for instance, I'd be grateful.

I have a differnt problem on the same issue. How do I delete a program that I installed using

./configure
make
make install

There is no make uninstall is there?

Hello, krock923,

I think you only need to delete the directory where you installed the program.

At least this is what you do if you install a software after using gunzip or tar (like OpenOffice.org, Mozilla, Thunderbird, Firefox, Ediptpadlite, to name those I've installed -- the tar.gz files contain an installer, or a setup file, which, I should think, makes the make-configure job for you, so uninstalling should be just as straightforward.

There's nothing like registry keys in Linux. Deb packages take apt-get remove to be uninstalled because apt-get installs them across directories, and apt-get remove is supposed (though I'm not sure of this) to remove all the occurrences of the files -- however after uninstalling apache2 forr instance I still can find apache2 directories here and there....

Cheers,

Thank you.