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this post was submitted on 28 Jun 2024
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Linux
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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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Which is his fault, but also this would never happen on Windows. The power and lack of hand-holding of Linux is a great advantage for power users, but with great power comes great responsibility, and many people don't need the responsibility.
For sure, which is why I only use Mint anyway. I need my hand held. But Linus was doing power-user things without power-user reading. You can't really claim the car is no good when you opened the hood and started swapping hoses without checking to see what goes where.
Yeah, I feel like Linux needs the equivalent of Administrator accounts on Windows. Root is the equivalent of the System account on Windows, something even power users might never encounter, because it's a level of power you shouldn't ever need.
We need users to have permission to install software and do other administrative tasks, without having permission to do very destructive actions like uninstalling core system packages. Aunt Flo should be able to install Mahjong from her distros package manager GUI, without needing dangerous root access.
Well, no, not exactly. Most accounts on desktop linux distros are admin accounts. The way I would define that is whether or not the user has sudo permissions, either by being in the sudo group or sudoers file. Some distros do ask if you want the user to be admin. And that's pretty analagous to being admin on windows and getting a UAC prompt for an elevated process.
Yeah, but there is no separation between being able to do day to day administrative actions like installing software, and being able to do destructive actions no one should need to do unless in exceptional circumstances.
Right, that was the other point I meant to make. There absolutely is a way to seperate the powers that sudo grants. The sudoers file allows you to limit a user or groups permissions to only certain commands. Distros could and should absolutely take advantage of this.
Beat me to it lol
Sudo actually has very granular permissions, just almost no one and no distros use them. You might as well replace it with doas for most people.
Windows has its own set of "never happen" things that would never happen on Linux. For example, without being instructed, writing a partition onto a disk with an "unknown" file system, which turned out to be disk, part of a RAID. Or simply override an existing boot partition after an update. Etc.