Thread: Another Ubuntu question

I spoke to a guru at work about this, the easy solution is to live with it.

Yes, or at least partly yes!

Under system -> users and groups, you can create new user names and change your own password (you have to log in as each user to change their password as far as I can see). However, Ubuntu, like most Linux distributions, is designed so that it is very difficult to do away with users and passwords.

Like almost anything in Linux, it can be done, but Ubuntu makes it very difficult to do, and rightly so - this is one of its key safety aspects - with no root login available, you have to use your password to do anything that is likely to be disastrous, each time you do it. And the same applies to any malicious software or login - does not absolutely stop them, but makes life much more difficult for them.

If you dispense with users and passwords, you might nearly as well use Windows.

In other words, as lro11 says - live with it!

John

Maybe what you want is in system -> login window. This allows you to start up logged in as a specified user when you boot the computer, but you are still logged in as that user, and need to use a password for any admin. tasks.

John

Just get yourself logged straight in as root user. This is the super user that can do anything.

Originally Posted by mjm295

Just get yourself logged straight in as root user. This is the super user that can do anything.

Ubuntu is set up so you can't do that, for the reasons I gave (although as i pointed out, it is possible if you are not afraid of command line operations!). If you want that there are other distributions that allow it - but it is still not a good idea unless you really know what you are doing; and most people who do really know what they are doing know better than to use root for everything.

John

sudo and vipw are your friends, maybe

You can remove the requirement to run sudo in Ubuntu, but I wouldn't recommend logging is as root.

You can change it so that it uses the 'su' command instead of sudo (which allows you to run commands as another user, including root), or you can type 'sudo bash' into a terminal window to give you a root terminal.

You can also set up program shortcuts to automatically run as the root user and prompt you for the password.

Just beware though, that some programs in Ubuntu do not like running as root without some changes to their config files. I've had problems with X Windows launching as root, and that will affect KDE or Gnome.

Originally Posted by mjm295

Just get yourself logged straight in as root user. This is the super user that can do anything.

Why on earth would you want to do that?