Torvalds Calls OpenSUSE Security 'Too Intrusive' 311
jfruh writes "The balance between security and ease of use is always a tricky one to strike, and Linux distros tend to err on the side of caution. But no less a luminary than Linus Torvalds thinks openSUSE has gone too far. When his kid needed to call from school for the root password just so he could add a printer to a laptop, that's when Linus decided things had gone off the rails."
Re:What an ass (Score:4, Interesting)
Has something changed, because Network Manager allowed user control over connecting to WLAN back in ... er ... 10.0 I think, or one of the 9. series. By default, in fact. I remember it annoyed me and it was uninstalled in short order, but it worked.
Personally, I'm not sure. I have not done wireless on Linux in quite some time and since I'm usually the only user on whatever system I'm using, meaning I set it up, I don't think twice about having to type in passwords. Being part of the sudoers group means I type my own password. It only becomes a problem when something like the file manager tells me that it does not have the permissions to eject the CD and doesn't know to ask for a my password. The sad part is that I am actually in the "root" group! What other group do I need to be part of? CDROM? Disk? Dbus? I don't know. I'll add myself to all of them and see if that takes care of the issue.
Now, imagine if this were a notebook and I was giving this to our sales rep to give a presentation at a potential customer's site.
Back to wireless, here is Torvald's post:
I first spent weeks arguing on a bugzilla that the security policy of requiring the root password for changing the timezone and adding a new wireless network was moronic and wrong.
I think the wireless network thing finally did get fixed, but the timezone never did - it still asks for the admin password.
And today Daniela calls me from school, because she can't add the school printer without the admin password.
Whoever moron thought that it's "good security" to require the root password for everyday things like this is mentally diseased.
So here's a plea: if you have anything to do with security in a distro, and think that my kids (replace "my kids" with "sales people on the road" if you think your main customers are businesses) need to have the root password to access some wireless network, or to be able to print out a paper, or to change the date-and-time settings, please just kill yourself now. The world will be a better place.
Re:Only root? (Score:4, Interesting)