Baslinux mailing list

[James Miller <jamtat AT mailsnare.net>]

I'm curious about root and other users on the BL system as it is used by
others.  I want to mainly ask, in this initial inquiry, about Steven's (BL
developer and maintainer) system setup.  I'm working backwards on this a
bit to get to my inquiry.  The starting point is actually a realization
that I've come to that BL, unlike other Linuces I've used, comes with no
"native" support for adding users.  It really stands out in that respect -
at least as far as distros I've tried.  As I'm recalling, adding
additional users to BL1 was a feature implemented only fairly late in the
development (someone finally wrote a script for it, as I recall).  As of
now, there is no user adding feature for BL2.  This tells me that for the
developer, having additional, non-root users is a very secondary concern.
Am I guessing correctly that you use your system almost solely as root
user, Steven?  I'm also curious as to why, if you do in fact use it that
way.  I can see all kinds of advantages to using the computer only as
root user - the main one being convenience (no need to su all the time,
or be told you have to have root priviledges to do such or another thing
on your system).  This does fly in the face of conventional Linux wisdom,
however.  I've had Linux installations tell me I was stupid, for example,
for browsing the 'net as root user (this was a real sort of "error"
message that popped up on the screen).  What's your take on this, Steven?
Is there any good reason for BL users to add a less priviledged user
account to their system and use that account  most of the time, as other
desktop distros encourage?  Does BL2 attempt to strike some happy medium
between Linux and that other OS, that by default gives the user maximum
system priviledges and does not offer to setup other user accounts by
default?

Thanks, James