I did it

[qwert_666]

horray, I finally did it

Im running mandrake linux 9.1 with the Gnome gui, I like what I see soo far but I am having some problems with the root user. the desktop for root defaulted to KDE and I get a blank desktop, I can still bring up the start menu equivelent. and use programs but that seems to be it.

[kilgoretrout]

It's not a bug, it's a feature Really, that's normal when you log in as root to kde or gnome. The stated purpose is to keep you from messing things up which is easy to do in a graphical environment. Most linux users only use root from the command line or run graphical window apps as root, say konqueror for some file management, like so:

$ su
[password]
# konqueror

which opens up the konqueror file manager as root. Most experienced linux users would not bother loging out and logging back in as root. You can edit text configuration files the same way by opening a console, su to root and:

# kedit [path to file you want to edit]

[qwert_666]

thanks alot, so your saying that I can just like temporarily change my profile to root on the command line with those commands? yeah I just wanna go in to poke around and see whats there

thanks for the help

[kilgoretrout]

Not really. linux, and unix for that matter, is not designed to be run as root all the time. To do so negates a lot of the security protections you have in linux. As an ordinary user you can run apps as root like I described above. Your profile hasn't changed. Only the single app that you ran from the command line as root is running with root privileges. Nothig else is changed. Every process runs with its own permission set and doing so greatly increases the security and stability of the system. The mind set is to give processes the lowest level of permissions possible for them to function properly.

By the way, welcome to linux. I hope you enjoy it. Have patience, it takes a while to get the hang of things. You may want to check out the Mandrake users board here:

http://www.mandrakeusers.org/

It's very newbie friendly with a great forum and you won't get any rtfm stuff there. I

[LocoCoyote]

You know, I noticed that if (when logged in as a normal user) I try to do something that requires root privilages, a dialog box pops up asking for the root password. [Running RedHat 7.2]

[LocoCoyote]

Handy feature.