On Tue, 20 Jun 2023 17:03:24 -0400 Greg Wooledge <g...@wooledge.org> wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 20, 2023 at 04:56:39PM -0400, pa...@quillandmouse.com > wrote: > > Apparently the broader dictum is "never run GUI apps as root". Why? > > What's special about GUI apps versus those you run in a terminal? > > The extreme example is a web browser. Your typical web browser > probably has thousands of bugs in it. > > GUI apps are big and complicated. Running them with elevated > privileges is just asking for problems. > So this isn't anything specific, but a general concern for what GUI apps may be doing behind your back, because they are so complex. > In a sensible design, the GUI part would run as you, and it would send > requests to a daemon that runs as root, or simply issue shell commands > with "sudo" or something, to do the parts that need extra privs. > I infer that Synaptic, by requiring root privileges to be truly useful, is mis-designed, since there isn't a daemon executing root level commands in the background. Paul -- Paul M. Foster Personal Blog: http://noferblatz.com Company Site: http://quillandmouse.com Software Projects: https://gitlab.com/paulmfoster
