[ale] Linspire and other commercial distros

[jasonday at worldnet.att.net (Jason Day)]

On Thu, Sep 30, 2004 at 09:21:08AM -0400, Christopher Fowler wrote:
> I do not know why they chose to run as root.  In our J2EE server that we
> sell sometimes the tomcat user needs to be root to do system related
> stuff.  I use sudo to accomplish that.

Slashdot did an interview with Michael Robertson a while back, and this
was one of the questions asked.  His response was, IIRC, that they
thought it would be too confusing for users to have to enter the root
password every time they want to install software or administer the
system.  A lame response to an extremely stupid decision, IMHO.

-- 
Jason Day                                       jasonday at
http://jasonday.home.att.net                    worldnet dot att dot net
 
"Of course I'm paranoid, everyone is trying to kill me."
    -- Weyoun-6, Star Trek: Deep Space 9