On Mon, 2005-02-14 at 20:02 +1300, Jim Cheetham wrote: > On Feb 13, 2005, at 11:04 PM, Nick Rout wrote: > > Puppy is a nice collection, and no doubt could be useful. However a > > distro that runs its user as root is going to have a hard time being > > taken too seriously IMHO. > > Well, that's because you are either taking "multi-user" too seriously > on a single user machine, or because you don't trust yourself not to > make a mistake. > > If you "know what you are doing" (which means, you know how to recover > when you stuff up), running as root all the time means that you're not > inconvenienced by inaccessible files when changing things :-) >
the trouble is puppy does not seem to be designed for people "who know what they are doing". it seems to be aimed at people who might not otherwise try linux because their machine is sub-standard or they are plain fearful. I'm not sure that anyone should be teaching those people that it is ok to run as root all the time. The advantages of linux over that other OS is a security model. Its not much of a model if you run as root. Not forgetting that the distro _will_ get you on the net via a modem, ie direct connection to the nasties. oh and the open source model of the software. The TWO advantages of linux are the security model and its open source nature. And the quality of the software, there are THREE advantages of....argggghh to much Monty Python in my youth.... > I suspect that when you run a small distro like Puppy, it's because > either you know what you're doing, or because you need to get into some > deep voodoo - and you don't want to be interrupted by file permissions > or password prompts :-) > > No, I don't run as root on my box - it's too important to run the risk > with. But on most servers, I get a root shell early on, and stick with > it - because I'm only on there to make changes ... > > -jim, just arguing the opposite case for sheer contrariness ... yes you are a contrary so and so. shall we form a club? or a support group? > -- Nick Rout <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
