Root as Primary Login: Why Not?

A user writes, "I help moderate a forum dealing with Mac OS X, and I'm having an awful time convincing a fair portion of our readers that logging in as root all the time is a Really Bad Idea. Worse, though, are the ones who try to convince others to log in as root all the time, claiming it's 'more Mac-OS-9-like,' or saying 'it's not really more insecure,' or even that 'a firewall should deter hackers pretty well.' I know all the standard arguments, but they're not working out. Does anyone here have some real-world anecdotes that I can point to?"

Comments

Not yet…

[DarkVein]

Does anyone here have some real-world anecdotes that I can point to?

But I can make some what did you say their addresses were?

Root is like crack

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't smoke it. I did once and got hooked. I ran Mac OS Updates as root. Fuck, I even had sex with my girlfriend as root. Man, that caused some permissions problems. When I started the road to recovery (logging in as Zacks) my girlfriend was all like: "Fuck no! You can't get any cause you don't own me an I don't go groups. You don't have the power to read, write OR execute so get out of my FACE" So I was all HELL NO bitch. And she wuz like you do not have root (superuser) privlages so get out of my TruBlueEnvironment! So then I went chown and chmodded her ass to me. Dat be-otch be up in my hizzouse. What what. Holla!

Re:Why i have to log in as root.

[BtAFMB]

You wouldn't think someone with a name like foobar104 would get so hot and bothered about the creative use of language.

Re:Here's one.

[Eagle7]

NB: this is zsh figuring out my typo, not 'rm' being annoying.

You mean, that's zsh being annoying. :)

Aqua skin for slashdot?

[Space]

I realize this is slightly offtopic and I can probably kiss some karma points goodbye but, did anyone else notice a modified image at the top of this page? This image was at the top of this story.