Topic awaiting preservation: Ubuntu

I decided to give Linux a second go.

I installed Ubuntu 9.10 and now have a 3 OS (triple boot) system.

Installation went very well but instead of experimenting with this new OS, I'm still tweaking it to remove annoyances.

When I first installed Vista, I had UAC disabled within 15 minutes.

Similarly, I'm already fed up with Ubuntu asking me for authentication whenever I click the mouse.

First thing I did was set the login to auto so I would not be prompted for a stupid password.

I'm setup as an Admin and I'm getting familiar with the Super User commands and how to login as root.

Is there any way to auto login as root. I know I would go straight to hell for doing that but I'm willing to live with that unholy decision.

(I know how to login as root..I want to auto login).

Or should I just go for another distro?

Nature & Travel Photography
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(Edited by SleepingWolf on 04-05-2010 02:21)

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SleepingWolf said:

Or should I just go for another distro?

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This.

Sane distros include: Debian (testing for a desktop), Slackware, Gentoo, Arch.

ubuntu is pretty sane - and it's sudo configuration makes much more sense for a single user system than debian's 'well just su to root' way.

what are you doing, actually? my ubuntu does not ask permission every minute, just when I'm messing around in the control panel equivalent and it caches the password ... actually, I haven't logged in as root in months, just sudoed from time to time.

Well to give you an example of the madness TP, i clicked on one of my drives to look for a file and I got this:

Authentication is required to mount device

I had to google for a solution and found this:

sudo gedit /usr/share/polkit-1/actions/org.freedesktop.devicekit.disks.policy

Find the id:
org.freedesktop.devicekit.disks.filesystem-mount-system-internal
Look for the line:
'allow_active'auth_admin_keep'/allow_active'
and replace it with:
'allow_active'yes'/allow_active'

One thing I found really funny was the linux community in general. Anyone who suggested to login or auto login as root was immediately
flamed and ridiculed. I thought "my god, how smug these people are". It reminded me of the South Park Episode where everyone buys
a hybrid and they become so smug about driving a hybrid that they smell their own farts and enjoy it.


Nature & Travel Photography
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quote:

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reisio said:

quote:SleepingWolf said:Or should I just go for another distro?This.Sane distros include: Debian (testing for a desktop), Slackware, Gentoo, Arch.

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Reiso: isn't ubuntu based on debian? This is very new to me.

Nature & Travel Photography
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http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=528303

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To enable auto login :

Go to System -> Administration -> Login Window

Under the security tab select auto login and user name (root)

You might also want to enable timed login with the same name (otherwise this works only at boot or with restarting gdm)

I use timed login of 10 sec, then you can log in as another user if you want.

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found this in ubuntu forms.

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SleepingWolf said:

isn't ubuntu based on debian?

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Yes, but sort of in the same way pre-NT Windows was based on DOS.

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SleepingWolf said:

to login or auto login as root

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This is frowned upon by knowledgeable Windows users, too, it's just historically a lost cause for that OS.

I'll say again, you should try another distro. You said:

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SleepingWolf said:
When I first installed Vista, I had UAC disabled within 15 minutes.

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That's because Windows is closed source, so you can't customize it from the ground up, you can only alter the state it comes with.

Most Unix distros do not come with this UAC-style nonsense; you have root and normal users, and you're expected to know when to use each for the most part. I've never seen another distro so heavily abuse sudo's purpose as Ubuntu.

The problem you're having with Ubuntu is because the system is unfamiliar to you, and you should have had to enable it yourself, which would have left you knowing how to disable it.

If you really want to get around fast, you should familiarize yourself with a terminal-based text editor like Vim or Emacs or nano or joe, and su.

I couldn't agree more with about everything reisio has said ^^

Become familiar with the system and why it is asking for your permission to do something.

also...go with Vi for your editor. It's what all the cool kids use!!!

Later,

C:\

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Seymour said:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=528303quote:To enable auto login : Go to System -> Administration -> Login WindowUnder the security tab select auto login and user name (root)You might also want to enable timed login with the same name (otherwise this works only at boot or with restarting gdm)I use timed login of 10 sec, then you can log in as another user if you want.found this in ubuntu forms.

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Yes, i've seen that or the equivalent post. But..the login window has been replaced by the login screen. even with root as a user (by setting a password) i was enable to select root.

Nature & Travel Photography
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reisio said:

This is frowned upon by knowledgeable Windows users, too, it's just historically a lost cause for that OS.

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I understand. but the real question is what are these "knowledgeable" users trying to protect?

If you're the sole user of a PC, if you have no private information on your PC, if you have all your data on a separate partition (and/or drive), if your OS is imaged so it can be restored in 5 minutes + the time it takes to upgrade your firewall and anti-virus and browser...etc. , where is the danger?

why would you need permission to do anything? Why do i need to authenticate to view one of my drives?

Are u going to format you hard drive by mistake? If you really want to fry your computer go into your BIOS and screw around with the voltages.

It's my PC, I don't want to have to ask it for permission to do anything. It's my slave, not my master.

Again, that's just me. I hate the "holier than thou, we know best attitude" - that's what I saw on the Linux forums - the same guys who force us to wear helmets on motorcycles!



Nature & Travel Photography
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(Edited by SleepingWolf on 04-07-2010 00:51)

Most people don't really want to have to restore from a backup, but you can also cause real physical damage to hardware. There's obviously no danger to your data if it's properly backed up or separated, though, and how you want to run your system is how you should run your system. Again ( ) I'd suggest a different distro; Ubuntu is built for a very specific user base, and you are not it. You can get to where you want from any distro, of course, but starting with Ubuntu you'll be chipping away for quite some time.

Yeah I think reisio is right here,

Personally I find it frustrating when people complain about an operating system not working properly or how they like it when they refuse to use it how it was intended. Since Windows XP users moaned and groaned about it moving things around since 98, and the same stories have come along in Windows 7, but if they invest a little time in learning how the OS is supposed to be used, (Just like you'd learn how to use a new DVD player properly) then they'd get just so much mroe out of it and find their work more productive.

If you don't like the way Ubuntu works, try another distro, Linux > Ubuntu.

@SleepingWolf, I don't mean this to be a personal attack, I was trying to write generally, but this thread hit a nerve with me and peoples expectations of what an OS should be.

Apart from the strange authentication issue you had with mounting your HD, I don't see anything else that could be considered a problem.

Interestingly enough, I don't know if you are A_for_anonymous, but you might find this article relevant.

http://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/bnj44/working_as_root/

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SleepingWolf said:

I understand. but the real question is what are these "knowledgeable" users trying to protect?

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you from yourself. I am guilty of being in a config file, not making a backup of that file and making a wrong change. Then X is broke. Not a big deal for that but what if you were in a config file that jacked up some hardware? Don't think you can't break something that isn't a 5 minute fix.

I know you say you make backups and all that but things go wrong...

Later,

C:\

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CPrompt said:

I know you say you make backups and all that but things go wrong...

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Not really. This is a computer, not a car or a motorcycle. Data can be restored. Hell, even your PC can be fixed after being zapped. Agreed?

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Blaise said:
Personally I find it frustrating when people complain about an operating system not working properly

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You must have been really frustrated when Vista came out.


Blaise, there is an important difference between an OS not working properly (read my post again and find the functionality complaint, there isn't one) and an OS asking you to authenticate by password so that you can look your drives and their files. Similarly, it should be my decision whether to login with a password or not.

Nature & Travel Photography
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SleepingWolf said:
You must have been really frustrated when Vista came out.

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You're damn right I was, in fact I chose to not recognise it as a Windows OS, instead waited for Windows 7.

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Blaise, there is an important difference between an OS not working properly (read my post again and find the functionality complaint, there isn't one) and an OS asking you to authenticate by password so that you can look your drives and their files. Similarly, it should be my decision whether to login with a password or not.

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Yeah fair enough, which is why I wanted to clear that I wasn't being personal with my comments, there definitely is a trend when reading reports online of users complaining about an OS being rubbish or just broken because it doesn't work how they want it to, and I dont' agree with that.

Still find it strange that you need to authenticate to read your mounted drives though, that does sound broken, unless you had them as user drives/directories in Windows, I know that you'll sometimes have to authenticate when using shared drives.

SleepingWolf,

I know that your frustration is with Ubuntu asking you to authenticate frequently in general (as opposed to specifically this drive-mounting issue), but in case you wanted to fix that, try this page:

http://ohioloco.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1299667 --> read the post by prshah. I hope it helps.

I don't really understand why it does this, myself. Sometimes I do something in the installation that makes my drives automount on boot without further fajiggling, and sometimes I have to manually unfuck /etc/fstab. I'm sure there's something painfully obvious that I should be doing (or not doing) when I install, but I guess I haven't researched it enough.

I do know that to mount a partition by any user (as opposed to by root) is a configuration that resides in/etc/fstab .

When I started with RedHat a billion years ago I wanted to always run as root (it started as a red background, too). I understood it to be some innate 'control of the computer' thing. I always used to try to chmod everything to root, too. To this day I use su instead of sudo a lot. I don't want to say that what you're doing is incorrect (it's your computer, do whatever you want), but that that mindset was, at least in my case, part of a Windows mentality. I was a Windows SuperDuperPowerUser; I wanted my machine set up like my Windows machine, damnit!

All I'm saying is that you are right in trying to control how your machine is set up and interacts with you, but also understand that if you try to use it in a way contrary to its philosophy, the system will fight you. If you're used to an oven and try to make brownies with a metal pan in a microwave, the system will fight you. You most certainly may succeed in modding the system to work the way you want it to if you try and tinker hard enough.

But you're probably better off just learning to use a microwave and learning not to stick metal pans in it.

That having been said- yes, the trolls can be hard on people learning. Frikkin' bastards, they shouldn't exist. When I have a linux/Ubuntu problem, I usually go here:

google: "my problem" + ubuntuforums
irc: #ubuntuforums
#ubuntu
(install gnome-xchat from Synaptic and #ubuntu on Alternet is one of its default options. I lurk there a lot soaking up what other people are asking about.)

It's not a better OS. It's just better for some things, but I still run RosettaStone, Dragon NaturallySpeaking, and SequoiaView on Windows. For everything else, I run Ubuntu and I like it much better (and I have Win7 installed in VirtualBox on Ubuntu for all the edge cases). I don't mind root password prompts for system config stuff, but I never get them for general filesystem use. But that's just me, others, obviously, may consider that a showstopper.

Sorry that was so long, I'll never do it again!

P.S. I also used to try to put my files in the wrong places like '/'. Live and learn not to do that, I guess.
P.S.S Also, when you want to manage your files as root, try typing gksudo nautilus into a terminal (or just press Alt+F2)

(Edited by Petskull on 04-30-2010 10:57)

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Petskull said:

but also understand that if you try to use it in a way contrary to its philosophy, the system will fight you.

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I think you captured the essence of the problem perfectly there.

Nature & Travel Photography
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also Linux Outlaws' forums is very knowledgeable they also have and IRC chat #linuxoutlaws on freenode.net
I have found that the #ubuntu-uk IRC is great. there are A LOT of people in #ubuntu

Later,

C:\

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Petskull said:

but in case you wanted to fix that, try this page:

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It was fixed right away...the solution is in the 4th post in this thread. but thanks.

sudo gedit /usr/share/polkit-1/actions/org.freedesktop.devicekit.disks.policy

Find the id:
org.freedesktop.devicekit.disks.filesystem-mount-system-internal
Look for the line:
'allow_active'auth_admin_keep'/allow_active'
and replace it with:
'allow_active'yes'/allow_active'

Nature & Travel Photography
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ah, my bad.

While we're on the subject, I much prefer Windows Explorer's "folder tree on the left, files on the right" arrangement to Nautilus's "favorite folders on the left, files on the right" thing.

On the other hand, I go into a hissy fit in Windows every time I want windows to be "Always on top" like on Ubuntu. OOoooo... and resizing system windows (progress bars, etc..)- you never know how much you need to until you grow used to it and no longer have it.

And Compiz's cube desktops, but I'll just stop now.

Another point here is the reason so many Linux users (because it's not just limited to Ubuntu by an stretch of the imagination) advocate staying away from root unless absolutely necessary. If someone does manage to exploit something on your system -- say, your web browser -- and gets it to execute arbitrary code, on a Linux system they also need to be able to escalate that execution to root in order to do any irretrievable damage to the system, or to take full and total control of it. If you're already running as root, then their work is done for them. The majority of remote exploits like that are "execution of arbitrary code as the local user." Escalation is a whole different kettle of fish, and not something generally targeted for Linux systems. I'm a Linux systems administrator by trade, and I know the arguments on both sides of the fence here, and in the interests of security, I stay away from root privileges unless I need them -- admittedly I often need them for long periods, but that's the nature of my job. For my everyday desktop work in Ubuntu, I don't grab root unless it's to do something.

Also, your system should be caching your authorisation to perform certain actions (change system configurations in /etc, mount or unmount partitions, etc) once you give it. If you get prompted every day, there's something wrong.

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Petskull said:

I much prefer Windows Explorer's "folder tree on the left, files on the right" arrangement to Nautilus's "favorite folders on the left, files on the right" thing.

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Hrmm? http://live.gnome.org/Nautilus/Screenshots?action=AttachFile&do=get&target=screenshot-browser-mode.png
...and clearly you haven't suffered Vista or 7.

Oh my god!!! Since when has this been around?!? This is something I've wanted forever- I'd just sort of given up on ever seeing it again!

Now I compelled to provide another *nix tip in return, but I can't think of anything.

How about muting/unmuting the sound from the terminal? I often start games with my sound on mute by mistake and have to shut down the whole game just to unmute the sound (my special keyboard mute key doesn't work in-game). Now I just press Ctrl+Alt+F1 to get to the terminal and type amixer set 'Master' 100% unmute or amixer set 'Master' mute to mute it. Then I press Ctrl+Alt+F7 to get back to my game.

Is that a laptop hardware mute key, or something you configured personally to use amixer?