Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Michael Robertson Says Root is Safe

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the he-calls dept.

Kez writes "HEXUS.net caught up with Michael Robertson, CEO of Linspire, at the UK launch of Linspire 5. Their interview with Mr. Robertson covers everything from hardware support to software patents, but a comment from Mr. Robertson on using root is perhaps the most interesting: "I defy anybody to tell me why is it more secure to not run as root. Nobody really has a good answer. They say 'oh, yeah, it is!', but it really isn't." I would imagine a few Slashdotters would dispute that."

3 of 1,174 comments (clear)

  1. rm -rf ./ by ruckc · · Score: 1, Redundant

    this should be good enough reason right here not to run as root.

    rm -rf ./

    and btw, i didn't press the . hard enough cause i was typing really fast so it ended up looking like this:

    rm -rf /

    oh and btw, /boot & /etc were the first things rm'ed

  2. rm -rf / by nurb432 · · Score: 0, Redundant

    oops i meant ./bladir

    If i wasnt root, i wouldnt have hurt a thing.. Instead, as being root i just killed my entire machine due to hitting enter by accident..

    There are of course MANY other examples of why root is bad, but this is an easy example.. And with how easy it is to typo...

    --
    ---- Booth was a patriot ----
  3. Re:Excellent commentary... by sbrown123 · · Score: 0, Redundant

    It can run ActiveX applications that have already been designed and implemented.

    ActiveX is nothing more than simple COM. It is not very difficult to use Java or XPCOM to communicate to ActiveX controls, and vice versa.