I found a (lengthy) guide to doing this but it is for gksu which is gone. I have to imagine there’s an easy way. I am running Ubuntu. There is no specific use case, it is just a feature I miss from windows.

EDIT: I always expect a degree of hostility and talking-down from the desktop Linux community, but the number of people in this thread telling me I am using my own computer that I bought with my own money in a way they don’t prefer while ignoring my question is just absurd and frankly should be deeply embarrassing for all of us. I have strongly defended the desktop Linux community for decades, but this experience has left a sour taste in my mouth.

Thank you to the few of you who tried to assist without judgement or assumptions.

  • bizdelnick@lemmy.ml
    7·
    7 months ago

    Nope. Running GUI as root in the same X server as unprivileged apps is insecure because each of them can take control over privileged window. IDK if this issue has been addressed in Wayland, but anyway there are no wayland-only distros nowadays.

    • Skull giver@popplesburger.hilciferous.nl
      6·
      7 months ago

      Any X window can control any other X window for sure, but I’m not sure why a malicious program would go through nautilus when they can just alias sudo in .bashrc. It’s not like Linux users tend to do regular virus scans anyway.

      Wayland does prevent this flaw, but it also makes running GUI programs as root kind of messy.