812
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 20 Jan 2024
812 points (98.3% liked)
Technology
57226 readers
4324 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
Most user software should NOT need sudo.
Typically you need "sudo" to use the package installer though, if that's where you're getting confused. But that's because most Linux package managers are built to install software to be available for all users. However once installed that does NOT mean the package always has sudo access. And the way Linux software is typically installed is just putting the executable in a certain folder, unlike Windows where you run a software's custom installer which asks for admin access and then does who knows what.
You usually have the option of installing for just your user, and I think that usually doesn’t require admin permissions.
My context here (which I should have been more explicit about) is "ordinary user is installing a closed source commercial large game" (with its own installer) and doesn't know if they are also getting a free rootkit.
Sure when it's something you compile yourself and you have some knowledge you can ./configure it to go under your home directory and not need sudo to make install later, but a game with a script or binary you need to run is likely to ask for root on launch (Especially on Windows) and maybe asks later or has command line options for a single user install, but we can assume the user does whatever is default.
I didn't suggest that it would (although it Could if it's malicious - on Linux that would be as simple as the setuid bit. Or ...back on topic... installing a kernel driver on either OS)