David wrote:
and do not forget that Konqueror is also a file browser, not just web browser (oh, does everyone really has to do "cd /etc; vi someconfigfile" in the text console?)
You, sir, are advocating one of the major 'stupid Windows users' arguments for Linux. Run as root.
The point is, I believe, that to disable root is considered a good thing. Those that disagree with that thought and wish to open their system that way are free to do so. Those that do not know *how* to do that probably should *not* do that.
Makes sense to me.
I don't think the people at Red Hat are entirely stupid, though I disagree with them on some matters and I think that preventing root from using GUIs is futile and misguided, especially as a good proportion of the software must be run with root privilege. Think, RH the configuration tools run with root privilege. That means all of GTK, python, perl and X,
RH does not disable the root account, it just prevents it from logging in to a GUI.
To do the job properly, it should (at least) allow the root account to be disabled entirely, and insist that if that's done the installer also creates an account that can be used for administration. Using sudo, not su.
Ubuntu has done that from day one (but not at the user's option) and it works fine.
Above I refer to "Red Hat" because it was on RHEL-clone that I mas most recently tripped up. I don't _know_ of any relevant way Fedora differs.