I found a (lengthy) guide to doing this but it is for gksu which is gone. I have to imagine there’s an easy way. I am running Ubuntu. There is no specific use case, it is just a feature I miss from windows.
EDIT: I always expect a degree of hostility and talking-down from the desktop Linux community, but the number of people in this thread telling me I am using my own computer that I bought with my own money in a way they don’t prefer while ignoring my question is just absurd and frankly should be deeply embarrassing for all of us. I have strongly defended the desktop Linux community for decades, but this experience has left a sour taste in my mouth.
Thank you to the few of you who tried to assist without judgement or assumptions.
Do not do this. “Run as Administrator” is a Windows answer to a Windows problem. The only time you should regularly need root privileges is installing software and editing system wide configuration files.
It would occasionally be handy running gparted, but for as often as I need to do that sudo gparted works just fine
I’ve seen people say that a few times here but any time I use gparted I get the Gnome ‘enter password’ dialog which seems to work fine.
I’m not on Gnome, variably either Xfce or LxQt, is probably what’s making the difference there
Your polkit will always prompt you for a password. No need to complicate it. If it doesn’t, then it doesn’t need to be ran as root
Polkit (Policy Kit) is an authorization framework used in modern Linux distributions to manage access rights and privileges on the system. It allows unprivileged processes to communicate with privileged processes in a controlled and secure manner.
pkexec a command used to execute commands with elevated privileges, leverages both PAM (Pluggable Authentication Modules) and Polkit to authenticate the user and authorize the requested action.
PAM is a framework used in Linux systems to handle user authentication and authorization.
Check out Polkit & PAM
While the other user explained what polkit is from a low level, I think it’s more practical to give you a high level explanation. Polkit is responsible for the dialog box that pops up when you try to open an app like GParted that requires root permissions (it edits partitions, a rootful task). What the user you replied to is saying is that you never want to run an app as root unless it prompts you for it (like with polkit prompts), or you know in great detail what you are doing. Running random things as root can break your system and the app you’re running. Most apps you will be using are not intended to be run as root under any circumstance, and at the very least will likely experience issues because of it (UI issues, data issues because the root home directory is not your home directory, configuration/setting changes, improper scaling, etc). Unless you know for a fact that something has to be run as root (like updating packages with your package manager) or you are specifically prompted when trying to do something, you absolutely do not want to be running things as root.
Just to further explain, even if an app isn’t started as root, it can request that permission as needed. For instance, Nautilus allows you to navigate through the root directory, and will prompt you for a password through polkit if you are trying to access something your user does not have permission to read (of course assuming your user has sudo privileges, but that’s beside the point). Unlike Windows, there is no practical use for a “run as root” option, because apps have the ability to request root access when it is necessary, and only when it is necessary. In addition to that, polkit limits the root access that an app is given to the specific actions for which it is requested (so an app can’t use root privileges to run unauthorized commands). The exception to that is when you start dealing with the terminal, but that falls into the category of “you better know what you’re doing and why”.
The short answer as to why this isn’t a thing in Linux is that the authentication and permission system functions nothing like Windows. In Linux, a “run as root” button is not a solution, it is a problem. The only reason that run as administrator exists in Windows is because sometimes the solution to a problem in Windows is to run an app as admin. That is not the case for Linux, and never will be.
There are many ideological differences between Windows and Linux. You’ll find many discussions here about how it is often not a good idea to try to do something the “Windows way” on Linux, because those ideologies and the software principles are incompatible. Part of learning how wonderful Linux is involves unlearning all of the horrible habits and ideological differences that Microsoft forces onto Windows users. This is one of those things that has to be unlearned, because full root privilege is not something that a regular app should ever ask for or even want in Linux. Root privilege is provided on a case-by-case basis from polkit with GUI apps; only when needed.
I don’t know why everyone is getting self-righteous about this. I’ve used Linux since the mid-90s, and occasionally I find it easier to just run a GUI file manager as root to do some filter and deletions of things in caches and such that need root permission. Hell, I want to edit the files in /etc/wireguard for my tunnels; should I only do this at a sudo prompt in the terminal when I’m perfectly capable of pulling it up in Kate and copypasting stuff in?
Get off your high horses, there’s plenty of valid use cases if you’re using your head.
AFAIK the newer Ubuntu gksu equivalent is pkexec, if that helps.
You could copy all system .desktop files to your home dir and automatically edit them with a script that adds an action to run them with pkexec or sudo as root. However, most GUI apps should never be run as root, because they can break the system. For example, they may create hidden thumbnail files owned by root and break thumbnails in all apps not running as root that way
Thanks, I’ll give it a shot. I don’t want it to always run everything as root, just on rare occasions.
I do not really see hostility or taking down. More of a difference of opinion or experience.
Also, this is not a private email thread. It is a public forum. Whatever advice you get risks becoming guidance for the community. I think it is perfectly reasonable, even responsible, for people to respond with their thoughts on security.
You can ignore the advice not to implement this capability on your personal machine. That is your call. However, this should not become standard practice by Linux users.
Thank you for answering at some point in the thread the use cases that drove your question. I was very curious.
When I have needed “Run as Administrator” in Windows, it has typically been to run the command line. The reason Windows needs this is because it has lacked “sudo”. The next release of Windows is adding it as a feature ( going the other way ).
I have used Linux for decades as well and really not needed this. Partially this is because tools that require root access are typically configured to ask for it already.
Your “need to delete a file” use case made sense to me but I do not run into it. Perhaps my file systems are mounted differently. Perhaps I am not manipulating files of other users ( sounds right ). Or maybe I am more likely to be at the command line. Your “edit files as root” use cases leads me to believe I use the command line more as that is certainly something I would be doing from the terminal. I have to edit files as root everyday but it is always from the terminal. I am not encountering files that I cannot edit in my file manager though as I would have navigated to those files in the terminal to begin with. Clicking around in a file manager to get to system files is not even something that would have occurred to me. If I am using the file manager, it is to manage my own files ( mostly media and documents ).
No judgement. Do things how you want. I was just curious what you were using this for. When I use Windows, I use “Run as Administrator” all the time. In Linux, I did not even notice it was missing. Going back to Windows makes me miss “sudo” in the terminal though. I am not the only one obviously as they are now adding it to Windows too.
