On Fri, 21 Jul 2000, you wrote:
> A disturbing trend in this modern age
> is that we feel compelled to protect us from
> ourselves. Microsoft offered up a convenient
> black box that protected us from the horrors of
> it's inner truth. Linux was to be the answer to
> that ignorance-by-consent.
>
[snip]
>
> Many of us are upset that our former freedoms
> have been robbed of us in the latest release. If
> there was ever a higher purpose to the Linux
> operating system, these changes are it's defeat.
>
You CAN still "play as root." It's just a bit more
difficult. If you don't like it, install some other distro
that's "wide open" (IF you can find one!) and run it! This
is NOT just a "Mandrake" thing (not running as root) it's a
*nix thing. AFAIK, you are strongly discouraged from
running as "root" in BSD and SCO as well. Heck, even in
RedHat there is a BIG notice when you first start up as
"root" that you're running the Gnome file manager as "root"
and that it's very dangerous.
In ohter words, chill, dude! Just because Mandrake has gone
a step further and made it more difficult to break things
as root doesn't mean you've lost any freedom. You CAN
by-pass those precautions.
John
