[sf-lug] GKsu has long been EOLed

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Bobbie Sellers (bliss-sf4ever at dslextreme.com):

> Thanks for the correction to my incorrect choice of terminology.

Yr very welcome.  I also took the opportunity to update 
http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Security/root-with-x11.html , as some things
have changed, and the page badly needed a summary table near the top.

> Because a program that must be run, say Synaptic, must be run with
> root authority rather frequently with a rolling release demands that
> the root password must be run?  Other than that I dunno...

First, you really don't need a graphical tool just to do package
operations, and you certainly don't need GNOME bloatware like synaptic
or KDE bloatware like KPackage.  If you like full-screen programs for
such purposes, aptitude's default ncurses full-screen mode is pretty
nice, as an alternative.  Personally, I always just use apt-get,
apt-cache, etc. -- fast, efficient command-line tools that work exactly
the same on all deb-oriented distros, such that you learn them once and
then can efficiently use them anywhere -- just as yum/rpm works exactly
the same on all rpm-oriented distros, such that you learn them once and
then can efficiently use them anywhere.

I completely understand sticking with the point'n'drool distro path of
least resistance when you've just started poking at Linux systems for
the first time.  But after a couple of years at most, one would hope
people would learn basic tools and not just mouse around.

But second, where a DE bundles something like Synaptic, obviously they
are going to prepackage it with a privilege wrapper as part of the DE
glue, the point being that you aren't going to have to worry about
GKsu going away because they'll have transparently replaced it
with something else.  (On a distro with GNOME affliction, that's
probably be pkexec/PolKit.  This week.  ISTR that on Debian it's GKsudo.)


> Well 6 of one half a dozen to another.

Being uninterested in security seems to work well until the day arrives
when security is interested in _you_.   Good luck with that, but some of
us prefer to be ahead of that game.