By default, Ubuntu does not create a root account that the user can login to. Instead users use sudo when they need to perform actions that require administrative access.
Obviously, the people at Ubuntu feel like this is a good idea, and everything I've read on the Ubuntu site gives plenty of reasons why they think it's a good idea (see RootSudo @ the Ubuntu Wiki, for example).
However, many other mainstream distributions, such as Debian, Gentoo, etc. don't set things up this way by default, and I'm trying to figure out why. If Ubuntu's default sudo-root setup is such a good idea, why aren't all of the other mainstream distros doing it too? This leads me to believe that there might be strong reasons for NOT setting it up this way; but I'm having trouble finding anything that gives any details on this. All I'm finding is articles/posts that talk about how great it is …
So my question is: Are there any major problems with Ubuntu's sudo setup (insecurity, functional limitations, etc.) that prevent other distributions from using this setup, and if so what are they? Of course, it might simply be a great idea that other distros have just been slow to pick up on, or resistant to because it's different from how things have worked for the past 30 years. If that's the case, I'd like to know that to.
Best Answer
The only non subjective disadvantage I know if is that when the root user does not have a password set it allows access to single user mode without a password.
A truly secure machine will be in a locked case, have booting from removable media disabled, a BIOS password set to prevent changes, a bootloader password set to prevent the kernel boot cmdline from being changed (so no adding
init=/bin/sh), and a password would be required to access single user mode.