logoalt Hacker News

pojntfxtoday at 7:06 AM8 repliesview on HN

It's fun, leading edge Linux distros (e.g. GNOME OS) are actually currently removing `sudo` completely in favour of `run0` from systemd, which fixes this "properly" by using Polkit & transient systemd units instead of setuid binaries like sudo. You get a UAC-style prompt, can even auth with your fingerprint just like on other modern OSes.

Instead of doing this, Ubuntu is just using a Rust rewrite of sudo. Some things really never change.


Replies

timhhtoday at 7:44 AM

You make it sound like there was a discussion where they looked at these two alternatives and chose improving sudo over using run0. Actually I just submitted a patch for this and they accepted it. I don't work for Ubuntu and I didn't even know run0 existed until now (it does sound good though; I hope they switch to that).

rich_sashatoday at 8:01 AM

Why is running a command as an ephemeral systemd unit better? Just curious, I don't have an opinion one way or the other.

Without knowing more, creating a transient unit just to run a single shell command seems quite roundabout.

1unatoday at 7:26 AM

It's possible to auth with your fingerprint (or even a YubiKey) in sudo. It's a functionality provided by PAM, after all.

silisilitoday at 7:20 AM

Ubuntu truly are masters of going all in on being different in a worse way, only to about face soon thereafter.

You'd think by now they'd have learned, but apparently not.

show 2 replies
CodeComposttoday at 7:29 AM

How can you stop it asking your password every single time? I asked my LLM and it hallucinated Javascript at me.

show 1 reply
Elhanatoday at 8:01 AM

Gnome is known for shitty UX, breaking stuff every release and refusing to fix stuff since Gnome3.

gzreadtoday at 7:23 AM

Is "GNOME OS" really a leading distro?

show 1 reply