I am trying to understand what is a conceptual difference between unix root account and windows local admin. I am a developer and despite IT department efforts were always given local admin rights so I could install whatever I want on my local PC.
But for some reason (and I think it should be a good one) I am just a user in our linux system. That makes it is impossible to me to sudo things – e.g. to get software installed from repositories, etc.
I suppose it is because root permissions grant much more privileges than local admin rights on windows. Is that the case?
Also is it possible in unix to grant particular user rights to install software e.g. using apt-get or yum?
Best Answer
I don't know much about Windows' administration, but I don't think there's much difference between Windows' admin and Linux' root. (I may be misunderstanding something, but from your question I infer everyone in your company has a Windows normal PC or fat client, and a Linux thin client or simple user SSH access)
It is normal practice not to give root access on thin clients (since it's company-wide root access) while letting users administrate their own PCs isn't a problem.
You can't install sofware with the package manager (apt-get/yum/...) since it requires root access. You may either request your sysop to install the needed packages, or install them
locallyin your home directory (which you have write access to, thus not requiringroot
).For installing in your home directory, you can use the following procedure (I'll use a real life example with Screenfetch, adapt it to your needs) :
mkdir ~/local
cd ~/local
wget http://git.silverirc.com/cgit.cgi/screenfetch.git/snapshot/screenfetch-3.2.0.tar.gz
tar -zxf screenfetch-3.2.0.tar.gz
chmod +x screenfetch-3.2.0/screenfetch-dev
~/.bashrc
file:alias screenfetch='~/local/screenfetch-3.2.0/screenfetch-dev'