Editing System Files
The anti-root crusade is kind of silly. Having been around computers for more than 40 years probably tempers any motivations to embrace such crusades. The contention is many people do not understand computers and some developers feel “duty-bound” to become self-appointed nannies.
Some KDE developers have joined this crusade. For a while users could not launch KDE text editors with root privileges. Thankfully this no longer is the case.
Through that controversy the KDE developers introduced a helpful feature. In Kate and KWrite users can open most files that require root privileges to change. When attempting to save the files the user is prompted to provide the root password.
The option to edit files directly as root is still required for certain files, such as those with limited access permissions. For many people using a GUI text editor as root cannot be dismissed. Yet this Kate and KWrite feature is a classic “above and beyond” attitude and solution. Kudos to the KDE developers.
Posted: Category: Usability Tagged: KDE
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