philw85: I completely agree. The time settings dialog is a great example for how this should work.
I think it's also fine to just let PolicyKit prompt when it needs to without telling the user beforehand. Average Ubuntu users are going to be admins on their single-user systems, and where users are not admins on their own machines it will still be clear what the problem is. Dialogs that connect to services that use PolicyKit don't need to be aware PolicyKit exists, and keeping those dialogs unaware of PolicyKit makes them flexible for more exotic configurations. There are so many in-the-middle configurations where the user is almost an admin, but can't do absolutely everything. Maybe the user is configured to be able to change time/language settings and install trusted packages, but isn't allowed to install untrusted packages. My point is that the question "is the user an admin?" is very ambiguous, so it's better to just not ask and let PolicyKit handle it. -- 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
