[Thunar-dev] Feature request: superuser mode

[N. Volbers]

Hello everyone,

I am totally amazed about the impact of my little feature request ;-)

> 
>> Here's another thought. We could also not use "Edit as Root", but just
>> opening a file which you don't have write access to could pop up a
>> warning. Then the user could select the option of opening the file as
>> a normal user (if he has read access) or "Open as Root", where he gets
>> to put in the admin password with which he gets write access.
> 
> To avoid popping up the stupid question too often, we'll need some kind
> of crystalball to be able to reliably tell whether the user just wants
> to view the contents of say xorg.conf or intends to modify it. Since
> this usually only applies to text files, it'd probably make sense to
> integrate a "save as root" into the text editor instead.

Some people have a launcher in their taskbar which opens up a root 
terminal. Then the terminal prompt is a convenient indication to tell 
whether one is currently root or not. The message that you implemented 
is the exact equivalent for that, and to keep it simple, I suggest to 
not overload thunar with 'edit as root' or similar actions. If someone 
wants to mess with his or her system files, they can now spawn their 
root thunar instance and launch the editor from there. I guess this is 
something I could very easily explain to a user, who is afraid of the 
shell, and who depends on using a file manager for such a thing.

Best regards,

Niklas.