this post was submitted on 18 Sep 2024
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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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Logged into GUI as root 🤣
The 90's was a wild time...
Specially for people coming from windows, this was normal. The appeal of mandrake and corel and suse was this kind of graphical control panel à la windows where you needed root privileges in a graphical interface.
I myself didn't learn about sudo until years later, and su just from debian 3.0.
Coming from Kali Linux, this is still normal
@cyberpunk007@lemmy.ca I don’t see what the big issue is…
It was a serious issue back then. People were wandering around on the Internet with root accounts. A lot of #linux IRC channels were kicking&banning anyone with "~root" or "root" ident with educational sentence like "Do not use root account as your ordinary account, check instructions". We don't see the issue widespread today since distros did very good intended "dark patterns" to push users to regular user accounts. Linux (or UNIX) "root" account is true god mode. E.g. infamous "rm" as root joke (!) could even affect Windows running WSL2, so MS had to implement special workarounds.
WSL has no direct connection to the host file system. WSL's drives are virtualized. Which is a real fuckin peach when you just want to copy things to and fro and end up discovering this 😅
Dig deeper, it is even more crazy. They use Plan9'es protocol.
Anyone with physical access to the computer also has full file system access and could wipe everything, even without password or technical knowledge.
It's bad for other reasons too, like a script on a website would launch as root... And also without a password if your disk was encrypted your data is protected even if someone has physical access.
It is just generally common knowledge to not run around in God mode all day, otherwise sudo wouldn't exist.
@cyberpunk007@lemmy.ca
@lord_ryvan@ttrpg.network
This is running in a VM without any internet access… that will end up getting replaced by another OS anyway
Oh ya I kind of figured, I was just having a laugh 😂
@cyberpunk007@lemmy.ca
Yeah if it was on a real machine or if I was connecting to the internet I wouldn't be logged in as root ^^;
I know 😂