What's your definition of system space? When's the last time you used an anti virus on linux?

I thinks it's very simple.
Use SUDO as run a command with root privileges,
SUDO SU is switching user to root.

system space is required by the system to be able to work. (space for log files, temp files, installing packages ...).
User space is required by the user to store his/her private stuff.

From my side I can reinstall the whole system without touching my personal files.
I have never used any antivirus software on my linux. Or probably I scanned something once....

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wrong, sudo or su is enough to switch to root. using sudo and su together is just bad practice.

Anywhere the user doesn't need to be in order to achieve whatever they need to do.
Never.

I believe there has been a slight misunderstanding here. There are no such things as "user space" and "system space" concerning user privileges on a Linux/Unix system. The operating systems term "user space" is contrasted to "kernel space" and it's a memory protection issue.

For details please see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_s...d_kernel_space

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I guess you would say that ubuntu, fedora, mint, and many others are configured wrong then. By default, for the benefit of the home user, most of the distros have sudo configured to allow the first user created on the system to use sudo and not ever need to su to root. In fact most of them have the root account locked out by default.

Other users do not normally get the use of sudo unless and until the admin explicitly adds them to the group that allows its use.

It is different, in that even though available, when a user needs to have root privileges, they must use sudo to gain those privileges. When logged in as root it is easy to forget and a careless command or typo can cause disaster.

Having to enter sudo with each command reminds the user that they are using escalated privileges and to not do so constantly.

Yes, we can debate the semantics, like my daughter saying that pasta and spaghetti are not the same thing when we tell her what's cooking.

User space is under /home.

System space is everything outside that.
I'm not anti-sudo. The distributions you mentioned are probably not configured the way which was mentioned by a previous poster.

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You mixed two different things. What you mentioned is some kind of responsibility, the code which is part of the kernel or not.
But we are talking about disk space, which is split into two parts again, user space which is used by the user (/home/user usually) and the system space, what is required and used by system components like cron, printer, package management, other daemons .....

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I posted a link on Wikipedia which says what the term "user space" means in computer science. Whoever thinks that term is also legitimate for dividing disk space is also free to send a link to any reliable source (university, encyclopedia, CS magazine...) which says so. I'm always ready to learn new things but always require proof of their veracity.

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We can say that spaghetti is a subset of pasta.
I think your daughter is more correct.
By the way I have a headache reading half way thru the posts.I worked 33+ years on another computer platform, retired now, so only Sudo for me, thanks.

Yes, these are two different things:
1. the disk space (storage) is split into two parts, one is used by the system and the second is used by the user.
2. (by half-word) the code execution is split into two parts, some code is executed in the user space (or user land) and others belong to the kernel space. It is not about the disk, but memory and process (device driver) execution.
So for example "user space" has no any real meaning without context.

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Sorry for being so stubborn about this, but please enter "user space" into Wikipedia search. You will get its real meaning without context. It's the page I've linked to.

I could also start saying root owned files are called "potatoes" and user owned files are "maracujas" but it wouldn't mean anything to anyone else. There is no generally accepted term for those, although just saying "system files or directories" and "user files or directories" is quite usual. There are no "spaces" on disk, that's not a technical term at all. The closest you get to it is having a separate /home partition.

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This is just nonsense. Without context nothing has any meaning. Probably wikipedia can explain it too.

And also there are no spaces on user.


just tell them => https://wiki.cs.huji.ac.il/wiki/Disk_space

Have you actually read the article I linked to and tried the search I suggested?


Sorry? Could you rephrase that?


"Disk space" is a proper term which means disk capacity available for use; it just means "quantity". It's also not further divided until any other "spaces". The page you linked makes both very evident.

If there IS something you could call "user space" and "system space" on disk, it could be said that the latter is space occupied by filesystem metadata like inodes etc. The former would be the available space an user sees. Any user, including root and daemons.

Those are basics of computer science. Now I'm aware that one doesn't need to know how things function to use them, but some basics should be needed. It's like with the car, you may not necessarily know how to change a tyre or fix the engine, but you should at least say how are those things called. It wouldn't be great if you call road assistance and say something "that thingamabob has stopped working" or "a thingamajig has blown" so the repairmen have no clue what they must bring to help you.

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