I agree!

The wording of this poll is exceptionally biased in its wording. I refuse to vote as nothing applies to me.

Leave it where it is. Granted Ubuntu, MacOS and others overuse sudo but that doesn't mean it has no value at all. As others have stated, granularity is the key.

There are some good explanations in this thread about what sudo is _actually_ for, and its intended use cases.
For example, for some of the systems I used to administer, I wrote a script to provide some insight into a particular batch queue. This involved running certain commands as root, so I set up /etc/sudoers to permit a small set of commands to be run as root. Nobody could do 'sudo su -' and get a root shell.

Probably in 2006 or there abouts I started seeing Red Hat adopt this 'sudo this' 'sudo that' approach.
Having worked as a sysadmin at Red Hat during that period, all I could ascertain from the devs that it was stupid to open a root shell with 'su -' (which was what all the sysadmins did, who are careful with a root shell).

The developers couldn't appreciate that it was indeed possible for someone whose profession and sleep was related to being careful, went about abusing 'sudo', putting it in blogs, documents. Quickly the mind virus spread.
You only have to look at the other crazy ideas such as aliasing 'rm' to 'rm -i'. On Red Hat, you can't even issue ' rm -rf ' without being prompted; you either have to unalias rm or call '/bin/rm -rf'.

Red Hat and Canonical (Ubuntu) are commercial companies who operate support departments. The idea (one of them) is to reduce the amount of support calls they get from people who opened a root shell, forgot it was root and did stupid things. It makes sense from this point of view.
I can see about 10 root shells open on my desktop at the moment, but they're mostly to Slack ARM build machines where I always need to use root. Other systems I only su - when necessary, to minimise accidentally pasting something from the clipboard into that shell.

There are plenty of people who use Linux who are sensible and careful, and find it irritating if their chosen distribution tries to treat them like they're less than so.

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Hi,

Slackware is unique and I wish it to remain such. Just because *buntu are jumping off the barn doesn't mean Slackware needs too follow. Absurd to try and walk the 'hold your hand' distro way. Let them to continue jumping off the barn. Leave Slackware alone!

As a Slackware user you have the means to secure the install! Just be aware of howto or ask here. 'sudo' is useful when you need others to have controlled access for utilities on the system. Trusted!

Try 'escaping' it

buntu can do what they like with sudo for all I care, doesn't necessarily make sudo a bad thing. Anything can be abused and someone can equally run everything as root or by abusing su.

The manual is clear:

I've abstained from voting, because I'm the sole user of my computers, I've never used sudo on Slackware, it's no hardship entering root's password, and don't care where it is.

I have likewise abstained from voting, as this question assumes that Slackware users are as prone to stupidity as *buntu and RedHat users to abuse the 'sudo' command. Slackware and its ilk are suited for mature users who know how to use root's powers judiciously and are well aware of its potentially destructive abilities.

kingbeowulf, I would strongly suggest that you take a closer look at this forum, and the discussion between veteran users and newbies to get a sense of how often 'sudo' is abused/overused. Rarely (if ever) have I come across a case where root's powers were used carelessly, and if they were, the users learned their lesson and abstained from similar behavior thereafter.

Summary: Leave sudo as is.

I wouldn't call RedHat and *buntu users stupid, I'd say they have poor taste in distros.

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I do agree with you about their taste in distros, but I didn't say that *buntu and RedHat users were stupid in general, just in their tendency to overuse the 'sudo' command, although my statement might have been worded as to leave that impression on the mind of a casual reader.

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Hi,

I too think that *buntu users are not stupid but just misguided or just drinking too much of the *buntu cool aid.

I apologize for inadvertently leaving the impression that I was calling *buntu/RedHat users stupid in general. In the context of the abuse of the 'sudo' command are *buntu/RedHat users stupid, leaving aside the wisdom of their choice of distros. Alas, however,too many people equate 'Linux' with 'Ubuntu' because a lot of sites are giving that impression. A curious paradox, given the fact that Ubuntu itself avoids using the word 'Linux' in its labeling. As I see it, there are two possibilities which would adequately explain this state of affairs. Either a) *buntu wants to focus attention solely on itself, thereby garnering mindshare in users looking for an alternative to Windows or b) *buntu wants to help users overcome the instinctive fear of new users when hearing 'Linux' (because *nix has the reputation of having a steep learning curve), much as the word 'computer' was avoided by DEC in the 50's & 60's in an attempt to circumvent fears of big, hulking machines when trying to sell their minicomputers.

I think that the first possibility is the most likely, although that might well be prejudice on my part, given statements made by Mark Shuttleworth in the past regarding the direction he wants *buntu to take.

I find it convenient to use sudo (with no password even) for mounting/unmounting removable media like cdroms, usb storage and the like. Other than that I'd just as soon use su to run privileged commands. I see no reason to move/get rid of the sudo package.

Agreed.

You could also use pmount instead.

EDIT

Hmm .. I only just realised that I could just use udisks or udisks2 for this and still avoid escalating to root.

udisks:
udisks will mount disks to /media/label.

udisks2:
udisks2 will mount disks to /run/media/username/label.

Note: Adjust the device name to match the device you wish to mount/unmount.

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