Mailinglist Archive: opensuse-factory (1578 mails)

[Michal Kubecek <mkubecek@xxxxxxx>]

On So 12. listopad 2011, 10:32:38 CET, Sid Boyce wrote:
> I am curious as I have had quite protracted email discussions with a
> guy about runlevels. He insists using init 3 and startx is the only way
> to boot a system but has never put forward a sane and rational answer
> as to why. As a matter of fact, no answer at all other than incoherent
> rants against xdm/gdm/kdm.

There is one big disadvantage of the "runlevel 3 and startx" approach:
one needs to set SUID bit on the X server binary. Given that there are
bugs in it from time to time that allow a normal user to circumvent
file permissions, this is not a good idea if you can avoid it easily.

Booting to runlevel 3 and using startx was common in 90's as memory
was expensive so there was no reason to run xdm and X server when
you worked on a VT most of the time and X session was started only
when you really needed to use some graphical application. Nowadays,
the situation is completely different: either you have a desktop
where you work in a DE all the time (unless something goes wrong)
or you have a server where you usually don't have an X server at all.

                                                        Michal Kubeček

--
To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@xxxxxxxxxxxx
To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-factory+owner@xxxxxxxxxxxx