Ubuntu user's report

[Net Llama!]

On 12/18/2004 12:28 AM, Myles Green wrote:
> Hi All, sorry for the length. If you're not interested in checking out a
> new distro you might want to forgo this email.
> 
> I recently installed Ubuntu on my usual system in place of my usual
> distribution (Slackware) for no reason other than seeing what all the
> hype was about. Having used Debian in the past (potato), and liking it,
> I thought I was prepared for what I was about to encounter. Much to my
> surprise, I found that I wasn't. No hassles, just pop the disc into the
> drive, reboot, answer a (very) few questions, sit back and watch it
> install the basic system. After that was done, pop the disc out of the
> drive, reboot, answer a few more questions and, if you answered 'yes' to
> downloading software, off it goes and installs updated software (most of
> it security related). If you popped that disc back in after the reboot
> it installs more off the disc along with the downloaded software and in
> about 45 minutes (broadband Internet + high speed cdrom) you're looking
> at GDM ready to login. That is, unless you elected to do a custom
> install and set up a server which, I'm told, there are several folks
> doing and using in production systems.
> 
> At no time are you asked to enter a root password, by default the first
> user created is added to the sudoers list. Now, I *did* have my
> reservations about this idea but I do (sort of) understand their
> reasoning. I also know how to type 'sudo passwd root' in order to
> circumvent that idea (I believe that's all that's needed) but I've
> pretty much gotten used to just typing sudo before any commands that
> require root privileges - this is after all not a mission critical
> system.

Maybe i'm just missing something, but how is that more secure than using 
root?  If your box gets owned, now they don't even need to get root?

-- 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
L. Friedman                       	       netllama at linux-sxs.org
Linux Step-by-step & TyGeMo: 		    http://netllama.ipfox.com

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