A rather comical error if you ask me since some of my university Linux boxes where doing the same thing.

When I log into root using the GUI it validates, window close's, screen goes blank, then the same login screen reappears.

This must be a common flaw amongst Linux boxes since the university use's a much different distro.

Any advice?

"Common flaw"? No. There are few distributions that allow root to log into a GUI environment. Red Hat 9 explicitly disables it in a straight install. I know other distributions do it as well. There are a number of people that consider it a security risk, for the same (if not more) reasons why a normal user should not use the root account to do day-to-day activity. Consider using sudo or su after logging into the GUI as a normal user. Or, if you must be root entirely, log into a console as root, and then issue startx.

Again, I would suggest trying to find some other means to accomplish what you need without logging in directly as root.

I use Gentoo and KDE 3.4 and it will not let me in as root either, not sure if it is Gentoo or KDE though. It is a really bad idea. If you mess up something as root it can be system wide. If you do it as a user then it only affects that one user, as a general rule.

I actually made two user accounts for mine. That way if I mess up dale, I can use dale2 to get help. It works I guess but I have never messed up dale yet. Give me time, I'll get there.

Why do you need to be root anyway?

Later

Well I logged into the root twice with the GUI before it all crashed. Apparently my permissions have been corrupted, altho I cannot find any which do not match 755. So I'm about ready to install again or try another distro.

My university -- whenever it's GUI boots I see KDE, where can I get that.

http://kde.org/

That should help. There is usually a way to install with your distro though. In Gentoo, I just type in emerge kde and it installs whatever packages it needs, which is a lot by the way. KDE is the biggest GUI, both in size and features.

With Mandrake I selected it during the install process for my GUI. Depends on your distro really.

Later

You can log in as root with SuSE. It just doesn't show an icon (like it does for the normal users), so you have to type "root" and "password" into the login-screen and get a nice desktop with bombs showing burning fuses ...

P.S.: SuSE uses KDE as default.

You may can do it but it is still a bad idea. I can tell it to let me in the login manager but I'm not going to because I don't feel like re-installing Gentoo. It takes longer since it compiles all the source code.

I say login in as a regular user. This is one of the reasons windoze sucks. Do we not learn anything from that?

Later

Sounds like someone might have edited root's .profile and it has an error.

Why cant people log in as root if they wanto?why should anybody tell other people what to do,If a person log in as root in kde and fuck the linux up,well that should be his problem.It is a stupid qusk to ask why poeple wanto log in as root.THe ansver are,it is more easy,If you wanto delete something,you cant do before you are logged in as root.Sure you can start a konsol and be root with su/sudo.But what is the point?I just wanto log in as root.If the distro gentoo dont support it,well then is a crap distro

Exsat!

Don't flame Gentoo based on someone elses sayso.
Few, if any, distros give you as much freedom. The issue mentioned above is with KDE, not Gentoo.

I too choose to login to root occasionally, because that's the way I prefer to work.
It's all about choice.

You are right!, Linux gives you the choice to do it. But do you really need to'. By login as root in KDE you are compromising your system in many ways. I can't think of a task that needs to do this, maybe you can give us some examples?

There is a reason why KDE comes by default with this feature disabled, It is one of the most important principles of security.

Login as root in KDE is like playing with fire, most likely you get burned. If you want to do it, no problem but remember that you were warned!.

Warning noted.

I rarely use a DE, and if I screw up the system, I recover it.
Simple.
As for security, turning off root is a very poor substitute for proper defences.

How is logging into the GUI as root more of a security/system damaging problem than just logging into a terminal as root?

Is it more damaging to type
or logging in as root, opening a cool text editor with syntax highlighting, adding the alias to the end of the file, and logging out?



ps. Do NOT use that code I just gave. The '>' redirect will overwrite the entire file. The '>>' redirect appends to the existing file.

It's not. Of course you can make worst things to a Linux System.

The point is that the security issues must be dealt carefully, an logging into the GUI as root is ONE of them. You certainly give us more examples of security issues that must be dealt with also. What I'm still wondering is why you need to logging into KDE as root?

So that those of us who don't know how to use vi or emacs can edit the config files. If there is another way to open those files up for editing in a graphical editor I would love to know about it.