Not biased towards Ubuntu?

Story: Debian... The daddy of all distros?Total Replies: 9
Author Content
jdixon

Apr 17, 2013
2:28 PM EDT 		"I would like to clarify that I am not deliberately biased towards Ubuntu or Ubuntu based distros."

So why does he assume that every distro acts like Ubuntu in disabling the root account and requiring sudo?
notbob

Apr 17, 2013
2:32 PM EDT 		"not deliberately biased" and never-used-anything-but are not mutually exclusive.
jdixon

Apr 17, 2013
2:58 PM EDT 		I think the key word there is deliberately, notbob. :) And with it included, you are correct.
vainrveenr

Apr 17, 2013
3:13 PM EDT
Quoting:I would like to clarify that I am not deliberately biased towards Ubuntu or Ubuntu based distros.
Excellent!

Then perhaps this piece's author would care to mention (or at least recall) the well-written piece of two weeks ago, 'Nine Myths That Shouldn't Stop You From Trying Debian' found at http://www.datamation.com/open-source/nine-myths-that-shouldnt-stop-you-from-trying-debian-1.html ??

A longer, but fairly-relevant quote from the latter piece:
Quoting:These days, Debian seems to be enjoying a modest comeback among experienced users. Hardly a week goes by when I don't hear on social networking sites of two or three people giving Debian another look.

This renewed interest may reflect a growing disillusionment with Ubuntu, the Debian derivative that has partly replaced Debian in popularity among Linux users. Almost certainly, it reflects a growing willingness to experiment with distros after the last two years of user revolts against GNOME 3 and Ubuntu's Unity. As one of the oldest distributions—and one specifically focused on user choice—Debian looks reliable in the middle of such uncertainty.

Still, many users hesitate to switch to Debian. The distribution is surrounded by myths, many of them adding to an impression that it is an expert's choice and almost as difficult to use as Gentoo or Linux from Scratch.

However, most of these myths are either out-dated or half-truths that need to be heavily qualified. As in any distribution, the user experience in Debian comes as much from the applications as the distribution. If you are comfortable with KDE or LXDE in Fedora or Mageia, you should be just as comfortable with them in Debian. To the extent that any of the myths are true, none of the more common ones are any reason for not at least giving Debian a try.


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djohnston

Apr 17, 2013
4:14 PM EDT 		I cringed when he said:

Quoting: I switched the user to the root user and edited the /etc/sudoers file using nano. I added the line:

gary ALL=(ALL) ALL

I saved the file and exited out of the root shell and I was then able to edit the sources.list file.


If he is able to edit /etc/sudoers file as user root, he is also able to edit /etc/apt/sources.list as user root. Instead of using the root account and password as Debian intended, he changed the setup to mirror Ubuntu's. There has been way too much of this type of behavior for my tastes from Debian derivatives lately.
JaseP

Apr 17, 2013
4:52 PM EDT 		When I first jumped from SuSE (there was no OpenSuSE at the time) to Ubuntu,... I flipped out that I could not login as root, and one of the first things I did was enable root logins (just not remotely)... I have since fallen out of the practice and do not miss it. I do configure my most outwardly facing systems to not permit graphical logins remotely and change default ports for the (disabled) remote ssh logins as well,...

With a good sudoers configuration, you really don't need root login. It's actually pretty pointless, as well as a potential security risk... I can't think of a thing you can't do with sudo that you can do as root.
djohnston

Apr 17, 2013
9:31 PM EDT 		@JaseP,

Just to be clear, I never login as root, except as the very last resort in case of a system problem. I always login as a normal user. Any root tasks are done from a terminal emulator window or from a program asking for root's password.

That's for desktops and doesn't take into account servers.
gary_newell

Apr 18, 2013
6:01 AM EDT 		To answer your questions and as general comment....

"So why does he assume that every distro acts like Ubuntu in disabling the root account and requiring sudo?"

This is not an assumption I make. I do like the sudo thing, I would prefer to do as little as possible in a root shell as possible.

"Then perhaps this piece's author would care to mention (or at least recall) the well-written piece of two weeks ago, 'Nine Myths That Shouldn't Stop You From Trying Debian' found at http://www.datamation.com/open-source/nine-myths-that-should... ??"

Not sure really why I would mention that.

"If he is able to edit /etc/sudoers file as user root, he is also able to edit /etc/apt/sources.list as user root. Instead of using the root account and password as Debian intended"

I think potatoes (po-tate-oes), potatoes (po-tart-oes). I could have edited the file directly whilst in the root shell but chose not to. I wouldn't have said that was cringeworthy. As pointed out above, I try to use root as little as possible.

I don't see sudo as a bad thing. I see it as a reminder that I'm about to do something that could have a significant effect. If I logged in to a root shell then I might forget that I'm in as root and do something stupid in a latter set of commands.

sudo is like a safety net as far as I am concerned
jdixon

Apr 18, 2013
8:42 AM EDT 		> This is not an assumption I make.

You expected sudo to be preconfigured for your use. What other assumption would we think you were making?

> I never login as root, except as the very last resort in case of a system problem.

Whereas I usually have an su'ed xterm open somewhere, and often have a root console I can switch to. :)

> If I logged in to a root shell then I might forget that I'm in as root and do something stupid in a latter set of commands....sudo is like a safety net as far as I am concerned

OK. I don't have that problem, but if you do.

Different strokes.... The nice thing about Linux is that one size doesn't fit all.
notbob

Apr 18, 2013
11:14 AM EDT
jdixon wrote:OK. I don't have that problem, but if you do.


heh heh.....

A classic case of the user being smarter than the tool. ;)

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