Re: [PLUG] User Accounts

["Joseph B. Welsh" <JWelsh@ConsecoDirect.com>]

Kevin Brosius wrote:

> On a single user machine, the advantage is pretty much what's been said
> already.  You have a little better protection for a few problems you
> might cause yourself.  I feel the same way, although I recently started
> running as a normal user on my systems, I ran my original home system as
> root for many years.  Once you start, it's a pain to change all those
> files you have access privileges for away from root, so I didn't do it
> for a while.
>
> So, the main advantage is protection of executables, their defaults, and
> your system settings.  These things are root only, so you have to make a
> conscious decision to change to root and modify them.
>
> Part of the disadvantage, on a single user system, is that much of your
> work will likely be owned by you.  For example, I have mail, multiple
> development source code trees, text notes, etc, all under my user
> account.  All these items are at risk if I run a destructive command or
> malicious program as myself.
>
> If you have more than one user, then often the amount of damage you can
> do is limited only to your own files, and not the system wide files,
> including others work files you might use.
Thanks,

I redid my laptop today and that is why asked in the first place.  I was 
trying to decide whether I should continue as root or start as myself.
I wanted to see what other people were doing on single user machines.

After all the replies, I decided to try it under my username.  So for 
the 3 hours that I have doing it, it has been a pain :-)
but I'll keep going

Thanks for the info

Joe



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