> Nobody sat down and designed the current behavior. Well, checking "admin" group membership long predates the advent of polkit. admin group members are still _the_ fundamental definition of an administrator in Ubuntu; sudo, polkit, etc. all define their privileges based on that in their default configuration.
So if you created a new group that are admins in the sense of "root", but is not called "admin", nothing on the desktop will recognize this at first. This includes language selector, but also things like which .desktop files are presented in the desktop and which aren't, then sudo, and a couple of other places which check group memberships. (You already updated your polkit configuration etc. of course, but that's not sufficient for everything). That said, if someone wants to change language-selector to query polkit for com.ubuntu.languageselector.setsystemdefaultlanguage instead of checking the group membership , that would be very welcome. It's one of the few remaining places which still directly uses the groups. ** Summary changed: - [Precise] Language selector won't allow me to install languages + checks "admin" group membership instead of querying polkit ** Changed in: language-selector (Ubuntu) Status: Confirmed => Triaged -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Desktop Packages, which is subscribed to language-selector in Ubuntu. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1008344 Title: checks "admin" group membership instead of querying polkit Status in “language-selector” package in Ubuntu: Triaged Bug description: In a new install of Ubuntu Precise, I cannot make any system-wide changes in the language selector (such as installing languages or clicking "Apply System-Wide"), only user-specific changes. All those controls for system-wide changes are greyed out, although my user does have sudo abilities and I would be able to enter the root password of the machine. The machine is freshly installed, but with customizations specific to our site, e.g. ldap authentication for users. Specifically, my user is an ldap user, not a local one, and there is a group in the ldap directory which was granted sudo capability by adding it to /etc/sudoers. My user is part of that group. sudo on the command line and gksudo work fine. ProblemType: Bug DistroRelease: Ubuntu 12.04 Package: language-selector-gnome 0.79 ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.2.0-24.39-generic 3.2.16 Uname: Linux 3.2.0-24-generic x86_64 ApportVersion: 2.0.1-0ubuntu8 Architecture: amd64 Date: Mon Jun 4 08:20:04 2012 PackageArchitecture: all ProcEnviron: LANGUAGE=en_US: TERM=screen-256color PATH=(custom, no user) LANG=en_US.UTF-8 SHELL=/bin/bash SourcePackage: language-selector UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install) To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/language-selector/+bug/1008344/+subscriptions -- Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~desktop-packages Post to : desktop-packages@lists.launchpad.net Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~desktop-packages More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp