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EDIT: Just realized I had “Gentoo” instead of “Ubuntu”. BIG difference there. Fixed all occurrences of Gentoo to Ubuntu.
Just read a review of Ubuntu Linux, okay Stallman, “GNU/Linux”, and they had a series of thoughts in there that ran:
For security purposes, Ubuntu does not have root login enabled by default
To allow yourself to login as root, type `sudo passwd’ and create a root password
Now remember to login to GNOME with your root account now
groan
Okay, a distro actually does something unique (viz., disabling the superuser to prevent system file deletion, symlink mangling, and other n3wb mistakes) and the first thing that comes out is how to disable the feature…AND to do something that’s globally unrecommended in the first place (you should never run X as superuser; the X binaries directory is not even in the Slackware superuser’s PATH variable…THAT’S anti-newb security).
Don’t get me wrong. I like enabling root access. I’ve test-driven Ubuntu and not having root was hacking me off after a few minutes when I needed to modify a file in /etc or something (probably Xorg.conf). `sudo passwd’ is the correct command for the job (sudo [wordplay based upon su, or superuser, actually] bypasses the login mechanism for root, so it’s about the only thing you can do under Ubuntu’s setup), but then misinforming people about running everything as root is just a crime.
Ugh.