this from me a couple of days ago:
It's not necessary to log in as root. Of course you have to learn how to accomplish all these things while logged on as a normal user.
For the command line stuff, I know a couple of options. Start up a normal shell prompt and type "su", you will be asked for your root password. Alternatively you will have somewhere on your menu an option to start a root console which will also prompt you for your root password.
If you are needing to browse through the directory structure as a root user, you will have "File Manager - Super User Mode" somewhere on your menu. (On my suse laptop, I go System > File Manager. I'm not sure where it is in Mandrake but I'm sure it is there and similar)
Armed with these 2 tools, you should not need to log in as root again and will be able to always log in as a normal user from now. I hope this helps a little.
And to this I would add that if you need to edit some files as root, there are several ways of going about it. ONE WAY is to find the file in "File Manager - Super User Mode", right click it and choose Open In > Kate which will let you edit in a graphical editor. Apparently "real men" use weird stuff like vi... I can only aspire - at this stage - to ascend to such dizzy heights. I must say though that I can manage "joe" which is actually fun in a strange way (I don't get out much) (except the ocassional tuesday or thursday night).
Roger motivated wrote:
Ctrl>Alt>Backspace will take you back to the login screen Nice try, but...... No it doesn't. It just auto logs me in again as Kelvyn. Ross logged me in as root from the desktop last nite, because we went into the httpd.conf file which I have to be logged in as root to get at. I was having so much fun and seeing that many different things last nite, I just couldn't retain it all. Regards Kelvyn
