> Do you have any problem with my statement:
>> Today Linux is being used by an individual who is the _only_
>> user of a standalone system (e.g. laptop). Permission issues
>> are much more intuitive in the Unix world than for a single
>> user/owner of a laptop.
I do: "Linux" is many different things, and I think the above is wrong
in all of the cases:
- Android/Linux: yes there's typically a single human user, but AFAICT
[my understanding of Android's design is quite limited] the user is
not really represented by any particular Linux-level user-id (instead,
every application seems to have its own user-id to try and make sure
they can't step on each other's toes).
- GNU/Linux on (typically headless) servers: many human users, and
usually none of them have a corresponding Linux-level user-id, tho
sometimes they do.
- GNU/Linux laptop/desktop: most of the time only one human user active
on it at a time, indeed. But the Debian desktop on which I'm writing
this message is used by my wife, my daughter, and myself, each with
our own Linux-level user-id. And most of the time, 2 of those users
are logged in (tho, since there's only a single seat, only one of the
two users's sessions is displayed and active at any given time; of
course I sometimes have long-running computations or SSH into the
machine while my wife sits in front of it, so sometimes both users are
active at the same time).
BTW, historically, Gnome has not been super-good at dealing with such
multi-login situations (the main culprit being sharing access to
USB/bluetooth devices, audio hardware, ...). In my experience, overall
the tendency is for it to get better over time, but there are
occasional regressions.
Software developers who don't pay attention of the "multi-user" case
invariably mess up the design really badly.
Stefan
