Paul E Condon wrote:
On Thu, Aug 18, 2005 at 06:44:34PM -0500, Albert wrote:
<snip>
If you run all programs as root then you are risking your system to the
quality of all the code that you play with. Seriously, _don't_ _do_ _it_.
As an alternative that is somewhat more safe and still pretty convenient,
I take the time to log in a console as root and leave it open while I do
most of my work as a user under gnome and kde. The screen looks very
different under a console so it is hard to forget that I am running as
root.
Thank you, Paul. I really do appreciate your advice. It is
indeed *very good* advice for most users. I certainly would not
encourage anyone I personally know to do otherwise. But I
started programming for a living in the late '60s doing assembler
on IBM mainframes. My first desktop was a Heathkit I built
myself. I keep at least three Linux systems installed on my
machine. Each mounts the others as data partitions for easy
fixing. For a couple of years now I have built LFS systems,
installing pre-built distros from the net only when a new box
came with MSCrap pre-installed. I don't mind fixing my messes
and I am very careful, so it happens very seldom. When building
and exploring a new distro, like Debian, running as root speeds
up the process greatly.
For the record, I did screw up an installation really good a
couple of years ago. I was writing a package manager app built
around owner:group, supergroups and permissions. That required a
wipe and rebuild.
In short, an installation, to me, is a consumable that I expect
to break. It's how I learn :)
Thanks again for your concern and advice.
--
Blessed are the cracked:
For it is they who let in the light.
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