What I HATE about F11

[Casey Dahlin]

On 06/14/2009 09:13 PM, Simo Sorce wrote:
> 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.
> 
> 

The ability for nautilus to prompt for credentials when the user tries to do something outside his permission level has been missing for far too long. Its annoying to implement, but I'll owe a beer to whoever finally does it.

--CJD