arm people distributing images with user 1000 already allocated, please stop that
Greetings;
The arm folks, like unbuntu and raspian, are distribution for
installation usually on an micro-sd card, install images with the first
user pre-configured. He is in the sudoers file, but the ability to
install other software to actually DO something is restricted to a root
pw only, and that is unknown/unpublished.
I just spent 2 days (and I still have one more item to fix, probably no
biggie, but it won't let ME run raspi.config, has a hissy because it
can't even find pi's home directory) with the sd card mounted
intermittently in a reader, removing the user pi from the
debian-jessie-full image, making it so that I was user 1000 and COULD
install what I needed onto an raspberry pi 3b. That SW was linuxcnc,
last nights bleeding edge version, supplied in a deb from the
buildbot.linuxcnc.org. I expected the raspi to have problems with that
SW because of its heavy, and time critical IRQ response requirements.
But not a single instance of an out of range delay was recorded while it
ran a virtual lathe to make half a dozen chess pawns on that lathe. So
we have a new, in-expensive machine controller lashup.
This existing situation is very discouraging to potential new users who
expect to be able to do these things from his own account. And finds
out quickly that there are many things that even user 1000 still cannot
do on the raspi, or an odroid64-c2, an even more powerfull SBC thats
still stuck in kernel 3.14 days. And that kernel, while running on it,
has NO support for its 4 gpu's, nor working support for spi, which would
appear to be the future interface to a machine controller of choice as
it gives 72 gpio lines, quite some number of which can become useful
functions like a PWM generator to control things that need an analog
voltage control, or a stepper motor pulse generator, even a quadrature
encoder receiver capable of tracking spindle position to a 1.5 degree
accuracy at 12,000 rpms in the encoder I've built. All that in an fpga
card that sells for $53 and can be field re-programmed with one of many
supplied fpga bit files.
Thats the bragging. But the pre-allocation of user 1000 in the
distributed image, instead of that being part of the normal first login
procedure is a PAIN IN THE A$$ to fix so that the first user can
actually install what he needs to get his job done while logging in as
himself, using his normal pw.
Please exert what ever influence you may have to make the first user a
first login function again for the arm distributions that port your
source.
Thank you Debian for a great, stable (I'm still on wheezy with this old,
slow, Phenom powered machine) os. Its a place of familiarity that Just
Works(TM) if one doesn't want to be a lab rat.
Cheers, Gene Heskett
--
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
Genes Web page <http://geneslinuxbox.net:6309/gene>
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