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How to get Unrestricted Access in Linux

by | Thursday, 27th Aug 2009 | 1 Comment | Share

UAC is one of the most annoying and least used features ever invented for an operating system. We hate it on Windows Vista, we hate it on Windows 7. Linux has an account restriction which prompts for passwords for all silly tasks like update. We equally hate this on Linux as well.

In fact, on Linux, we have to enter the root password, even if we have root privileges to perform a root level operation.
Disabling the regular password prompt on Linux is quick and easy. Though there is no GUI for doing this at present, we hope one will be introduced someday. But for now, you can do this to disable the password prompt on Ubuntu Linux.

  1. Open up the terminal. Enter gksudo gedit /etc/sudoers . This brings up the file /etc/sudoers opened in Gedit.
  2. Look for the line %admin ALL=(ALL) ALL .
  3. Change it to %admin ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: ALL . All set, save and close.

Now you are free of all annoying password prompts for package installations, updates and all applications.

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Chinmoy Kanjilal is a FOSS enthusiast and evangelist. He is passionate about Android. Security exploits turn him on and he loves to tinker with computer networks. He rants occasionally at Techarraz.com. You can connect with him on Twitter @ckandroid.

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  1. Anirudh on August 28th, 2009 at 4:47 am #

    1. Editing the sudoers file should be done with “visudo”, which does some syntax checking and updates other files afterwards.
    2. Don’t ever ___EVER___ grant full root privileges to yourself. It’s never required unless you’re doing system level tasks, or installing software to protected folders.

    If you are too pissed with having to enter a password, run “sudo su” in a terminal to open a root console, and use that – don’t make your gdm run as another user, it’s dangerous and outright stupid.