Thoughts about running as root

[Jonathan Hutchins]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Marvin GodfatherofSoul Bellamy [mailto:mbellamy at kc.rr.com]

> Some tasks like web browsing will be pretty dangerous as 
> root.  Think of all the executables that Yoos R. Stoopid downloads and
fires 
> off without hesitation on a Windows box.  If you've got people doing that 
> on a UNIX box as root, you have completely negated the security advantages
of a 
> true multiuser OS.

Well, I'm not really talking about "average users" here, any more than I'm
arguing about the benefits of secure userspace, be it Linux or NT.  Then
again, how many true multiuser workstations do you deal with?  Windows 95
can do multi-user profiles, but nobody uses them.  99% of PC's are just that
- personal computers with one user.  I would guess that 305-50% are managed
by the primary user.

Thing is, I was being good, and running Netscape as user, and one of the
first things I hit was "Netscape's gotta have a plugin".  So I ran it as
user, and it barfed, and I ran it again as user, and it went smooth but
didn't take, so I logged out as user, logged in as root, installed the &^%^
plugin, and it worked fine.  So why switch back to user?

I don't really do much user-level stuff like casual browsing as root, mostly
I'm working.  If I need a GUI browser, I'll toggle over to Windows, browse
to the URL of the package I'm grabbing or whatever, and paste it to wget.