Dear all,
what is the proper way to start KDE in Linux? I do it from Linux prompt and executing startx in root account. In terms of security, is this a proper way? or should I start it in user account?

regards,
ethereal1m

afaik you can:

- start KDE using any old login manager such as kdm, gdm, xdm or slim
- use your ~/.xinitrc and startx on the cli once you have logged yourself in

Personally I would NEVER run a desktop environment as root as it opens holes, your likely to surf the net and bingo, your system is compromised.

My advice:
Log in as normal user using either of the methods above and if you need to run something like kate, dolphin or systemsettings in root mode, call it up on the CLI and prepend kdesu like:

kdesu systemsettings

That way you've got the security of being a normal user and the convenience of having KDE programmes running as root under one hat.

My 2cs

Very cool...

Note that if you have problems with KDE applications running as root, "su -" to a root terminal, then run the applications.

bcooksley wrote:Note that if you have problems with KDE applications running as root, "su -" to a root terminal, then run the applications.

This usually doesn't work as there is no X server available. I suppose you could set it up so it works?

And another thing: kdesu works for me, but kubuntu people need to use kdesudo

Hmm... "su -" works fine here, sudo doesn't, and neither does "su" ( which tries to screw up my normal user file permissions too.... )

If I understand correctly by what the help says about the "-" option on su (which is short for "-l" or "--login") is that "su" merely changes the userID for that process (to the root user), whereas "su -" will log in as that user (and execute the new user's .profile, if they have any, I believe).

I'm not sure how "su" would screw up normal user file permissions if "su -" doesn't, since applications launched under either will (or should, at least) run as the same user with the same permissions.

Alternatively, kdesu (or kdesudo) have the benefit of opening a nice dialog for entering the password which is nice particularly when creating desktop shortcuts.

As for su vs. sudo, there are plenty of articles which explain the difference, but basically su changes the running user to the new user (root by default) whereas sudo (after it has been set up, which it is by default in Ubuntu) allows a normal user to execute privileged processes, requiring only the user's password.

toad wrote:And another thing: kdesu works for me, but kubuntu people need to use kdesudo

That is not quite right. Even though Kubuntu uses KDESudo instead of KDESu, it also integrates it so that the default workflows do not get disturbed. Even on Kubuntu you can call kdesu, which will be using kdesudo in the background.

What will not work is calling kdesu on a terminal, but that is a general limitation across distributions since kdesu itself is not stored in the standard binary paths, in those cases you can still run kdesudo on Kubuntu (or add the appropriate path to the binary search paths of course ).

ethereal1m wrote:Dear all,
what is the proper way to start KDE in Linux? I do it from Linux prompt and executing startx in root account. In terms of security, is this a proper way? or should I start it in user account?

regards,
ethereal1m

As mentioned by others, you should never start a graphical session as root. Ever.

That said, do you want to use a graphical login? If so, here's what I do in Arch Linux:

1) Set runlevel 5 as the default in /etc/inittab:

Code: Select all

id:5:initdefault:

2) Also in inittab, start KDM using the following line:

Code: Select all

x:5:respawn:/usr/bin/kdm -nodaemon