Hacker News Reader

From a security point of view that would be a good idea, or at least making sure you don't need root for everyday tasks. Requiring root to, e.g., install & configure applications is a huge antipattern IMO.

View on HN

Android of course requires root for installing and configuring applications. It just grants the root automatically.

Developers cannot trust a random phone «owner».

No, it doesn't. Only a few very core system processes run as root and even those are contained quite a bit via SELinux. The application layer of the OS including installing apps does not run as root or with equivalent access.

Have a look at https://qubes-os.org to understand why you're mistaken.

I know Qubes. I meant "requiring root to, e.g., install & configure applications is a huge antipattern" on standard Linux distributions, where most people just use sudo in their usual shell, so an attacker merely needs to take over a non-root user account (and their .bashrc) to get root.

> so an attacker merely needs to take over a non-root user account (and their .bashrc) to get root

So if I don't use sudo then the problem with root is solved?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com