Creating and managing user accounts in a GNOME 3 or Ubuntu desktop

Having multiple user accounts is too confusing for the users that Gnome3 and Unity cater to. So is having a separate root account, or requiring "sudo". Instead, they should just have one account on the machine, which can do anything, without the user having to memorize any passwords, as that would be too confusing.

Root privileges in the default account?

Uh, no. That's what got Windows {95,98,Me} users in so much trouble.

(Although I won't rule out sarcasm, just in case.)

sarcasm, now there's a word.

He's using sarcasm, so we need sarc-disasm to decode it.

Wasn't that the original premise of Lindows until folks pointed out to them that this was a really bad idea?

That's what Puppy Linux does. That, plus no updates between releases, equals security like Swiss cheese. Thanks, but no thanks.

Perhaps that was sarcasm, but there are a few Linux developers that take that approach.

I'm just pointing out that this approach, whatever its downsides, would fit perfectly with the mindset that the Unity and Gnome3 developers have, where they want to "avoid confusion" among users.

Also, I'm pretty sure Windows 7 is no different in this regard. I have Win7 on a partition on my work computer that I have to boot into occasionally for something that doesn't work in Linux (like yesterday when I had to run Microsoft Office Live Meeting to watch some slides in a corporate presentation/meeting I was attending remotely). There's no separate "root account" there, only my one user account. Once I'm logged in, I can do anything I want; install software, delete system files, etc. But even Win7's UI is deemed "too confusing" and "too difficult" by the Gnome developers, so a distro that uses Gnome3 as its flagship DE should, logically, eliminate the root/user divide just like Lindows did, no matter what negative effects this has.

> There's no separate "root account" there, only my one user account.

i believe you're correct and that at least the Windows 7 accounts created when you first start the machine have administrator rights by default, but I haven't been able to verify that.

@jd, you are correct.

At least a user account with administrator privileges is a scoonch more secure than a root account, but only a scoonch.

Actually running as root all the time with no password is just fine. Every time security is raised on DistroWatch we get a cadre of people who insist that is true. They mainly are Puppy Linux fanbois. They insist they've been doing this for years and they have never been hacked.

Heck, with no system log how would they even know if they were hacked? Geez!

Some people will never, ever get a clue about security, even if it bites them hard you know where.