Technology Tales

Taking the sudo command beyond Ubuntu

27^th October 2010

Though some may call it introducing a security risk, being able to execute administrator commands on Ubuntu using sudo and gksu by default is handy. It's not the only Linux distribution with the facility, though, since the /etc/sudoers file is found in Debian and I plan to have a look into Fedora. The thing that needs to be done is to add the following line to the aforementioned file (you will need to do this as root):

[your user name] ALL=(ALL) ALL

One that is done, you are all set. Just make sure that you're using a secure password, though, and removing the sudo/gksu permissions is as simple as reversing the change.

Update on 2011-12-03: The very same can be done for both Arch Linux and Fedora, The same file locations apply too.

A quick way to do an update

8^th August 2008

Here's a quick way to get the latest updates on your PC using the command line if you are using Ubuntu or Debian:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade

Of course, you can split these commands up if you prefer to look before you leap. At the very least, it's so much slicker than the GUI route.