Grokdoc talk:PostInstallation

From Grokdoc

My newbie user could easily set up a home network using MS WindowsXP/98SE but was not able to do so using MS WindowsXP/SUSE Linux. Having a list of Linux equivalents of common MS Windows terminology would be good. It isn't easy to use the help in Linux to solve such problems if the Linux terminology is not known to the user. For my newbie the Linux help system should contain a reference to Internet Connection Sharing (with an explanation of the Linux terminology so as to slowly educate the newbie).

Ok, one of the biggest limitations I'm having with my Linux experience is trying to configure stuff such as the /etc/fstab, the /etc/inittab an whatever. I know one of the pros that Linux has is the existence of a 'root' user who 'owns' everything and only that user can alter the configuration files. But as for me, I'm the only user for that computer, so there's no need for me to limit the capacities for the other users (or THE only user account I really work on). Why isn't there a command such as 'Edit as Root' for these kind of accounts? Indeed it would be very helpful, because having the 'Read only file' window come up after I worked a couple of minutes on a file is pretty dissapointing.

I believe that is one major drawback in Linux. Perhaps it would be easier just to work as 'root' always, but I believe that's not the point, is it?

So if this is a security measure for the Linux systems, which I understand must be very useful for multi user computers, etc, there should be some way (like the one I discribed before) for bypassing the read-only issue.

Parallel to this, the other thing that bothers me is that I also cannot access some files (or folders) because they belong to 'root'. I can't even SEE them! What's the point?

I know you can do a chmod thing through the terminal, if you become root and everything... But c'mon! Isn't there an easier way to do this?