What I HATE about F11

Simo Sorce ssorce at redhat.com
Mon Jun 15 01:13:49 UTC 2009


On Sun, 2009-06-14 at 14:23 -0800, Jeff Spaleta wrote:
> On Sun, Jun 14, 2009 at 6:45 AM, Simo Sorce<ssorce at redhat.com> wrote:
> > I haven't done a graphical root login in the past 10 years probably and
> > on multiple distribution. Graphical root login is meaningless.
> 
> 
> Let me ask you a question as an example to better define the
> expectation on behavior that people have on what it means to
> administer a computer system.
> 
> Can you run the thread audience through the steps on how you
> personally go about changing permissions on a root owned file or
> directory on a Fedora install to give write access to an admin user..
> using nothing but graphical tools as installed by default in the
> Fedora Desktop?
> 
> I honestly don't know how to do it.  And I wouldn't think to do it
> that way. I'll reach for the commandline somewhere in the process
> whether it be to configure sudo or just doing the chmod under su.
> Nautilus exposes permissions for root owned files but I don't see an
> obvious hook that allows me to use existing authorization
> infrastructure to gain access to change those permissions as an admin
> user under nautilus.  But for someone else...someone new who didn't
> waste time learning how to banner attack their classmates logged into
> the school's Vax system via a serial connection, someone who is
> installing a linux system for personal use and learning how to
> interact with that system and is basically their own admin...,they may
> instinctively reach for a graphical way to do stuff like file
> permissions manipulations.  root login may realistically be the
> simplest way they know to gain access to graphical tools to perform
> simple operations that the user desktop does not allow.
> 
> Its great that sudo exists and can be configured but how do you
> discover that tool as a new user doing a self-administered install?
> Nautilus is the obvious, intuitive for file management tasks, and if
> the only graphical way to get to a version of nautilus that can
> manipulate system files is to login as root..then it sort of makes
> sense that inexperienced users will attempt to do that..because its
> the logic of behavior the that graphical tool UI suggests.  If there
> is an expectation that users can work with the graphical tools to do
> simple administrative tasks, I'm not sure enough thought has been put
> into how to self-consistently expose that functionality.

You certainly have a point here Jeff.

Simo.


-- 
Simo Sorce * Red Hat, Inc * New York




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