You SHOULD be root if you open synaptic. synaptic opens a secure database in order to maintain the software inventory. Plus, it frequently installs programs and files to secured parts of the OS.
On the other hand, if you have to be root to see your home directory, the owner and/or access rights are wrong on that directory. The reason for avoiding root is that root can do virtually anything. You don't have to look any farther than Microsoft Windows to get an idea of what "anything" can mean. Most people will log in as an ordinary user and use the "sudo" command to elevate their privileges temporarily. There's also a "su" command that can change the effective userID for a given command shell, but that's usually discouraged in favor of the safer "sudo". There is no universal command line guide, but many Linux commands can give a synopsis of their options if you run them using option "-h" and/or "--help". For more detailed assistance, the grand old standard is the "man" command which outputs a short manual page. Use the command "man man" to get more information. Going up from there is the "info" command, which is man with hypertext, so to speak. Finally, a lot of the GUI programs have GUI help with a command-line topic. There are thousands of commands that you can run off a command prompt, but, unfortunately no universal standard. Some are very well documented, some not at all, in which case, it's Google Time. Tim On Sun, 2012-04-22 at 13:33 -0400, brett michaels wrote: > Is there any link to a list of commands that tell one how to do things like > open a program such as the browser or use the media player to play a video? > This GUI business is a road to nowhere. My limited skills will never get > any better if I keep using it. > One other thing. People have said that one should never stay logged in as > root, but why? > This version of Mint 12(that's what they call it on the startup screen) > makes you login as root if you even so much as open Synaptic, so what > difference does it make? > It offers two kinds of accounts,"Administrator" and,"Standard", but > "Standard is so restrictive so that it does not even allow you to open your > home folder. > Btw, Ralph gave a very enjoyable presentation. > Thanks, > Hugh --------------------------------------------------------------------- Archive http://marc.info/?l=jaxlug-list&r=1&w=2 RSS Feed http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/maillist.xml Unsubscribe [email protected]
