this post was submitted on 15 Apr 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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It's a relatively simple question, but it's a loaded question, it's like someone asking you how you run "apt-get upgrade" on Windows, the question implies that this is possible and necessary, the correct answer to any such question is "what is it that you're trying to accomplish? Why do you think you need this?". 99% of the times the answer is that the person is trying to do something else entirely, this is known as the XY problem, the person has problem X and is asking how to solve problem Y that he's having because he thinks that's the only way to solve X.
In OP's case he caused the issue by running one program as root, and then everything that program touched needs root now, so he needs to run things as root because he's running things as root, it's a cyclical problem, if he had never ran things with sudo he wouldn't need to run things with sudo. Everyone was asking him why he feels he needs that and he wasn't answering, in one answer he let it slip his original mistake that caused all of this headache.
Yes, the community can be a bit toxic sometimes, but if everyone is asking you "why you think you need this?" There's a good chance you don't, and if you refuse to answer the questions of people who are trying to help you, you make it real hard to be helped.
Sometimes people want to be generally helped, and sometimes people just want an answer to their question. If the answer is "it's impossible" then that's a valid answer, but if the answer is "I'm not going to tell you, instead I'm going to assume that what you actually want is me to teach you why you were wrong to ask the question in the first place" then theres a good chance that actually they just wanted an answer, and you deciding for them what they need comes across as patronising.
It's not impossible, but each DE has their own context menu, each application has their own context menu, without understanding his use case it's impossible to answer the question. If he had said I want to edit root files then the answer would be the nautilus-admin plugin, but he kept shutting himself and not answering simple question about what is his use case which made it impossible for anyone to answer.
If someone asks how to tie a noose you ask for context, answers are vastly different if he's trying to tie his shoes than if he wants to hang himself. Even if you plan on helping the person hang themselves you need to know the use case. Read some of the replies he sent and you'll see his entire problem is caused by him having run things with sudo to begin with, and now having lots of permissions problems that he thinks the best solution is an easier way to run programs with sudo, which will put him in more of the same situations needing that more and more. He can use his computer however he wants, but at that point it might be easier to just login with the root user and be done with it.