On Thu, 1 May 2008 12:58:23 +0000
Andy Smith <andy@???> wrote:
> On Thu, May 01, 2008 at 01:54:54PM +0100, James Courtier-Dutton
> wrote:
> > Um??? So where is the question? I don't see any question marks
> > at all in that entire email!!!
James is just being pedantic, I understood that Paul was posing a
question from the outset :-)
> I think it was just a chance to say "I don't like ubntbuntntutntu"
I'll not comment on that as I'll just get accused of flame baiting,
but I don't like the use of sudo for doing admin tasks and have
almost never used sudo, the one exception is on my local server,
landing,which I normally access as a normal user via ssh and have
it set up so I can run <sudo aptitude safe-upgrade> without having
to use su+password, though that is what I do if I need to do any
other admin tasks on that box.
IMHO admin tasks should be done as the root user and not as a pseudo
root. The U* way strikes me as being like windows where you can give
a user admin rights and that user can then do anything.
So I think the debian practice of creating a root user during
installation is the correct way. In some ways it might be safer
to not use su from within X but to use CTRL + F* and login as root
and then do the admin tasks.
Incidentally James set me up with ssh as root to my VPS so I do
(almost) everything on my server as a 'real' root user.
FWIW I think the current Debian Installer is a big improvement on past
versions. Whilst it doesn't install without asking any questions
it now asks very few (country, keyboard and what to do with the
hard disk, I think, and even the last has defaults so no need to
resort to cfdisk any more)
My biggest gripe with debian is that gnome is the default GUI
interface, which as I'll never use it is a bit of a pain as it means I
have to bail out of the installer after the basic system is installed
and do a manual install of X + wmaker + any apps needing X.
--
John Lewis
Debian (Sid) & the GeneWeb genealogical data server
