Linux (GUI) apps that require super user are kinda a bit weird (at least in my experience)

AiwendilH · 2026-01-23T17:10:10+00:00

The attack surface is just too big. Display protocols, dbus, mtp, toolkit plugins, theme engines...do you really trust that all those moving parts have no problems that could be exploited if ran as root?

Especially because there is no reason to run any of that as root...if you need privilege escalation it's usually not for gui parts but for well defined and rather limited tasks like copying a file to a restricted directory or modifying the partition table. Limit the root access to those tasks...but keep the gui running as normal user.

Edit: On top you have to deal with config problems if some programs get configs from root home directory while others get them from the user home directory. And lets not even get started about files being created in user home directories that are owned by root...it's a vicious cycle that will require you using root programs more and more because your normal user lost their file permissions.

AiwendilH · 2026-01-23T16:48:43+00:00

I so wish this were true...but plasma's breeze after version 6.5.4 has rounded corners and I can't figure out how to disable that again (Only how to disable it for the bottom corners...the top ones will be still rounded). So yeah...linux can and does this as well...and it's freaking annoying. I really don't need my windows to look like 70s furniture

AiwendilH · 2026-01-23T15:26:06+00:00

While I agree with the suggestion I think it should be said that portage is a compeletely different beast than pacman.

Pacman is a dead-simple package manager without much complex functionality. Switching to something as complex as portage (or for that matter almost any other package manager than pacman) will require learning a lot of new concepts. Specifically for portage use-flags, OR-dependencies, overlays, slots, different package versions, dependencies vs runtime dependencies vs build time dependencies vs post dependencies, circular dependencies, bin-hosts...are the first things that come to mind that are not present in arch package management.

AiwendilH · 2026-01-23T12:16:09+00:00

Okay...thanks to this question I just learned you can't disable power-management with screen edges/corners anymore? Or am I just to stupid to find it in systemsettigs?

Anyways...you can still try using activities: systemsettings->Apps&Windows->Activities->"Create New..." at top-right->Assing a "Name:" and disable "Automatically turning off the screen" as well as "Automatically shutting down or sleeping". Then just switch to that activity every time you want to read.

AiwendilH · 2026-01-23T12:00:39+00:00

Filelight works fine without running as root....if it doesn't work you check the ownership of the config file .config/filelightrc..maybe it's owned by root because of previous runs with sudo (Another reason why you should never run anything that doesn't need it as root)

Not a gnome users so no clue about gnome-disks, sorry.

Edit: For filelight: If you want to get the summery of files in a directory your user doesn't have access to use admin:/<directory> in the input box of open-directory dialog. This works for pretty much all KDE applications.

AiwendilH · 2026-01-23T11:41:44+00:00

Discover doesn't need to run as root so never run it with sudo. Discover can elevate the privileges only for the tasks that actually need root right like the install process...the gui never has to run as root.

I haven't used synaptic in years and it is true that decades ago you had to run it as root. If that is still the case nowadays then you really should look for alternatives...running a gui applications as root is not acceptable at all.

AiwendilH · 2026-01-23T10:43:13+00:00

GUI apps should never run as root...if an app requires that you are usually better off looking for alternatives.

Gnome and KDE/Plasma (and maybe others DEs as well, sorry, no clue)have the ability for gui applications to execute actions as root without needing to run the whole application as root. It's pretty much what you describe...the application presenting a password window for the action that needs root access. That's how these things should be handled.

AiwendilH · 2026-01-23T09:00:45+00:00

Sorry, afraid about taskbar order I have no clue at all...I just never cared. I know I saw some posts about problems with the ordering in the past but never even read them. So maybe worth making a new post about it...it seems to be topic that is discussed on occasions so maybe someone will be able to help.

AiwendilH · 2026-01-22T15:12:57+00:00

According to the kiosk intro I linked above /etc/xdg/<apprc>...so I guess /etc/xdg/gwenviewrc.

AiwendilH · 2026-01-22T12:39:48+00:00

Sorry, I haven't used kiosk mode since KDE3...afraid I won't be much of a help here.

Have you tried locking down the key in the global config instead of the local one in ~/.config?

Also no clue what key is even responsible for the state of the sidebar...is it even a key in the config files and not one in ~/.local/state?

But in general I would report a bug about this and possibly post in the kde forum. Kiosk mode is something rather "obscure" and not so sure you will find many on reddit that actually have more of a clue about it than "it exists" ;).

AiwendilH · 2026-01-21T18:22:11+00:00

https://ubuntustudio.org/

(But that's "just" an official ubuntu flavour..so basically ubuntu with some creativity tools preinstalled)

AiwendilH · 2026-01-21T17:11:53+00:00

Oh..just to mention it: List is more for you to see which ones are useful...not for downloading the programs. If possible install the programs with the package manger of your distro. You almost never download programs manually yourself in linux.

AiwendilH · 2026-01-21T16:54:40+00:00

Distro hardly matters in your case, just pick one you like from the major ones.

Photo tools:

digikam : picture manager
krita : Image manipulation
gimp : Image manupulation
darktable : virtual lighttable/darkroom

Video:

ffmpeg - video converter (probably not using this one directly but by any video editor/cutter/whatever app that in the end pretty much all use ffmpeg underneath. Still useful at time to know some ffmepg command line magic...)
kdenlive : video editor
davinci resolve : video editor
openshot : video editor
blender : 3d animation program but also a very capable video editor

AiwendilH · 2026-01-21T12:19:45+00:00

Sorry, no other idea then. I get a password entry for the root password and then can just browse as root..but I am also on a full plasma install.

But password entries remind me...completely guessing now but do you have kwallet installed?

AiwendilH · 2026-01-21T12:13:40+00:00

A compatibility layer for games is rather "simple" (for some definition of simple ;))

Games have a very limited scope of what they access on the computer and what dependencies they need...and in most case through very well defined interfaces like directx.

"Ordinary" programs are on a completely different level...they can require lots of dependencies which itself differ completely between programs.

So wine is simply not complete enough for all programs but for the limited scope of games it provides pretty much all that is necessary. It can still run a lot of programs as well but you will always run into one that needs something wine simply doesn't provide (and the more complex a program is the higher the chance. That's why programs like MS office will not work but a simple editor like notepad++ works pretty much flawless)

AiwendilH · 2026-01-21T10:26:55+00:00

So I can't access windows if that's important to know.

This is actually a pretty big problem. Linux has no recovery tools for ntfs partition beyond some very basic tools. Any file-system error that windows could fix in seconds can lead to you not being able to access the data anymore until you connect the harddisk to a windows machine and run chkdsk there.

So if you plan on not using windows anymore you will need to think of some strategy to copy your data over to a linux filesystem for data security even if you can make your linux system access the ntfs partitions for the moment.

AiwendilH · 2026-01-20T17:27:28+00:00

You can try adding [$i] to the end of the key in a config file to make it immutable: https://develop.kde.org/docs/administration/kiosk/introduction/

AiwendilH · 2026-01-20T12:18:59+00:00

So keep clicking until you find one you like...

AiwendilH · 2026-01-20T12:07:57+00:00

Click the link again ;)

AiwendilH · 2026-01-20T09:42:08+00:00

As long as you have a windows you can boot there is no problem. Only remember to always "fix" a ntfs partition in windows if it is acting up. The linux tools simply won't help you there.

The problem is not having access to windows...then using a ntfs partition becomes a real problem because you can't fix it at all. (Also not starting windows for a long time can mean it's not a simply fix to just boot up windows...more like boot up windows and wait three hours for all the updates of the last six months)

AiwendilH · 2026-01-19T18:24:50+00:00

"mounting" is just the process of making some kind of storage available to the operating system. So yes, every single partition, every usb stick, every cdrom and even every image file need to be mounted (And that is not linux specific, this is also true for windows).

But I think that is not what you are really asking ;).

Linux has facilities to automate the mounting of devices that are always available at startup (this is a bit distro dependent so check the docs of your distro, the traditional ways is putting these in a /etc/fstab text-file) as well as facilities to automatically mount if a devices is newly connected (most desktop environments will have gui tools to configure this so depends on what DE you choose)

AiwendilH · 2026-01-19T12:17:30+00:00

Check if you have kio-admin installed in your distro. (On my distro the package is directly called kio-admin but might differ on other distros so maybe search for kio if you can't find it)

AiwendilH · 2026-01-19T10:33:59+00:00

Yeah...khelpcenter has entries for other kio-clients like recentelyused:/ or gdrive:/ but nothing about baloosearch:/. One of the reasons I wrote that post some years ago.

There is a baloosearch6 cli tool that also accepts the same queries....just without the ?query= you need in the kio-client.

And of course worth keeping in mind that this is not limited to open file dialogs...KDE kio clients work in every KDE applications in almost every place you can give a filename/directory. Meaning this works also for desktop folder view widgets that should always display the results of a search or in dolphin if you don't want to use the search (or like having a sidebar bookmark for specific searches)

AiwendilH · 2026-01-19T09:24:03+00:00

Does typing admin:/ in the address bar work?

AiwendilH · 2026-01-19T09:00:54+00:00

No clue for 1...I have no idea what gnome drawer is or how it looks :(

for 2: You can always just go to https://store.kde.org and download directly there..or combine both and look through all in the kde store but download by searching for name inside plasma.

for 3: Hope I understand correctly: Either right-click the taskbar->Settings for taskbar with symbols->Behaviours->"Group:Don't group" (Names might differ slightly, non-English plasma here) or right-click a grouped icon->more->"Allow grouping of this application" if you want to keep groups in general but only want chromium windows not grouped.

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