[ILUG] From the register. XP machine rooted in 200 seconds.

[Rick Moen]

Quoting John Madden (maddenj+ilug at skynet.ie):

> As a matter of interest, have Linspire changed the default-run-as-root
> behaviour of their desktop, or are they still breaking one of the golden
> rules?

My information is that Lindows 1.0 defaulted to not creating a regular
user, and included default kdm autologin.  Ergo, absent action by the
installing party to create a non-root user, a lot of simple-minded
persons ended up running as root all the time through inertia -- not
that the distro was incapable of proper security roles, as has been so
often alleged.

What I heard was that they fixed that installer hazard starting with
Lindows 1.1 (which was later renamed Linspire).  

The traditional Linux community mostly misunderstood the problem's scope
all along:  I can't tell you how many times people (not you) have told
me, utterly in error, that Lindows runs only as root.  They also
generally fail to credit Linspire with immediately fixing the problem,
which they reportedly did.  

Our community's failure to give credit where due is probably mostly
because you and I might never actually encounter Lindows/Linspire:  Why
would we go out of our way to buy a somewhat feature-shy shrinkwrapped
retail Linux distro aimed at novices?  But really they've been done
something of an injustic.