Root access removed

[Jeff Vian]

Chris Hewitt wrote:

> Chadley Wilson wrote:
>
>> Hey there friends,
>>
>> I have been working on a desktop solution for home users, I have 
>> discovered from client feed back and support that 90% of all
>> calls logged are as a result of simple apps requiring root access.
>>
>> So I removed the need to put in passwds on some of the user PCs and they
>> are happy. I know what you are going to say to that but hear me out
>> first.
>> End-users who are new to Linux easy irritated by passwd prompts,
>> My one customer made a (I think valid ) comment: He said and I quote 
>> "I should be given the option to choose whether or not I want a passwd
>> protected system. Why do other people tell me what I need."
>>
>> OK now in fairness to his situation I can see how this is. He is a stand
>> alone box with no access to the internet from home.
>> His box drives a Lexmark printer and Primax Scanner. He uses a USB
>> memory stick as removable storage and a cdwriter for backup.
>>
>> So I did the same on my PC and guess what, there is a huge difference in
>> performance. Why would that be?
>>
> With the Redhat/Fedora model the installation requires making an 
> unprivilaged user and people tend to log in with that. For things 
> requiring root access then yes the root password prompt comes up. 
> Annoying maybe but at least the option is given.
>
> In the MS model, no such unprivilaged user has to be made during 
> installation (I've not used XP so maybe that differs?), so people tend 
> to log in as Administrator so already have the privilages. I manually 
> make an unprivilaged user and log in as that but when I need 
> Administrator privilages for something I simply get a message telling 
> me I cannot do that. I have to log out then log in again as 
> Administrator, do what I need, then log out and log in again as my 
> unprivilaged user. Its not just the time in doing these log out/ins, 
> but in setting up the programs that I had and getting back to the 
> point where I was before.
>
XP Pro by default creates all users as administrators, and does not 
assign a password.   :-(
It creates the Administrator account and does ask for a password there, 
then later in the install gives the opportuinity to add more uisers. 
 They are admins as well and it does not assign passwords.
Not good for security at all.
This model may be why his users are upset about using passwords.  But we 
all know how secure a system without passwords is,....... NOT!!!!!. :-(

> I think the Redhat/Fedora model is much more user friendly. You could 
> suggest to your customers that they log in as root all the time. They 
> would need to accept that making a mistake could have much more 
> disasterous consequences, which is why non-root access is better.
>
> As to why there should be a performance difference, I do not know.
>
> Regards
>
> Chris
>
>
>