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.
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.
It depends on the file browser you are using.
The default, nautilus.
“Run as Adminstrator” in the context menu is a default feature in Windows. It seems odd I’m the first person to want this in Linux.
There used to be an addon you could use, but I stopped using it ages ago so I’m not sure if it’s still maintained. I think it was called
nautilus-adminbut there was also another script.As a workaround, you can edit the address bar (ctrl+L, there’s no button because Gnome is weird) and add “admin://” to the start of the path. This is exactly what the addon used to do for you through a menu item.
As an added bonus, this doesn’t require you to run nautilus (and therefore all kinds of sketchy file parsers) as root.
As for why you seem to be the only person who wants this: running software as root has an annoying tendency to fuck up cache permissions (if environment files aren’t loaded correctly), has graphical glitches, and violates a lot of security assumptions developers make. Wireshark, for instance, will refuse to run certain code if you launch it as root because it wasn’t designed to protect the user from malicious scripts in that scenario. I’ve run programs as root for year sand I’ve seen the many ways in which it’ll subtly mess up your system.
There’s nothing preventing you from adding a context menu item to launch programs as root, but it’s not an included feature for good reason.
Oh my gosh, this is so useful. The lack of an address bar was driving me insane. Thanks.
You’re not the first person to want this in Linux. As others mentioned, a form of it is built in. Much like windows apps that require elevated privileges. Similarly Linux apps will prompt for a password during launch if required on a properly configured OS. I’m not going to argue that it shouldn’t exist. I’ve rarely ever run a sudo <gui app> from the terminal, but the few times I have over the last decade+, Dolphin file manager has a nice option for the terminal built into it which makes it easy.
That’s not how that should work. You also shouldn’t need that in Windows either.
Programs that need Admin rights will ask for it. There are a fee limited cases but most of the time it creates more problems than it solves.
From your comments I’ve read it sounds like there is more to this story. Can you share what you are trying to do? On gnome gnome disks can run fine under the user. It will elevate when it needs to and it is designed with least privilege.
For file shares root is pretty much meaningless in most contexts. If you don’t have access you don’t have access as authentication is handled server side. If you setup a automatic mount check your mount options as you can set it to be owned by the local user. Also if you mounted the share in a graphical file utility such as nautilus it will be mounted for the local user so you will not need root.
Root should be used very sparingly. It is not the same as Admin on Windows. It is almost equivalent to the SYSTEM user on Windows.
You have no idea what that would do in Linux. First read some documentation, then decide if you really need it. I guess you can see by the number of people trying to put you on the right path that what you want is not a good idea.
I’m not a child with a machine gun, I just don’t want to go to the terminal every time.
Then let us address the underlying issue. You should not need root for the majority of tasks and never for desktop usage.
It sounds like something got messed up when you ran a different program as root.
It is rare that you would want to run an entire GUI program as root, and if it is needed, the program should prompt you for it. Do you have a specific use case where you need to do that regularly?
Not regularly, but the most common use I’ve encountered is text files used in various configurations.
Not necessarily a satisfactory solution for you, but the usual way to handle that is just using a text editor in the shell with sudo, like nano or vim. It’s pretty fast and easy once you get used to it. I don’t know if there are any good graphical ways of doing it.
I know. That’s what I’ve been doing for years. I could also just
sudo gedit file directory filenamebut it’s SO much easier to right-click “open as admin” which is why I asked.That is the 1% I mentioned, and the easiest way is installing this https://github.com/nautilus-extensions/nautilus-admin which I think is in the apt repos, so probably
sudo apt install nautilus-adminworks.But I STRONGLY encourage you NOT to install this, you’ve already made a mess of permissions on your computer that by your own account caused you many headaches by running graphical programs with sudo without any need.
I would suggest right-click in the folder in your file explorer -> open in terminal ->
sudo nanoautocomplete file name (tab tab). At least to me that doesn’t seem that much more involved and is safer. Otherwise, as others have noted, there are apparently ways of doing what you want, but it is discouraged for good reasons.