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Ubuntu 26.04 Ends 46 Years of Silent sudo Passwords

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Re: Ubuntu 26.04 Ends 46 Years of Silent sudo Passwords

#141

Fascinating . . . reading the comments, it seems like the vast majority think this is a long overdue change. For myself, it never occurred to me that there was any issue and I'm slightly unsettled by the change (i.e. it is far from obvious to me that it's a good thing). It is not something I've thought deeply about, of course.

Because you long forgot how confusing it was, that you can't see if your keystrokes are accepted by the machine. This is a change for people, that are new to Linux/Unix

Worse than this issue, but kind of related, sometimes TTY1 (and maybe also the other TTYs) is being spammed by log info on boot, and if you have a TTY login it isn't obvious you can just log in anyway. Had a friend using Arch+i3 with TTY login, pretty new to GNU/Linux in general, so he kinda threw up his hands like "ah dang, can't log in, it's broken". I tried to tell him to just type his credentials anyway, but he didn't get what I was saying at first. Took a bit before we got him logged in and could address the other issues. I've had similar issues on my machines. I once had kernel log verbosity cranked up by accident, copied my config from another machine where I was chasing a GPU bug. Well, the same settings on the other machine were presenting way worse, constant never-ending line-spam, before and after login. Had to get into a graphical environment half-blind to see what I was doing and then turn down the verbosity. IMO there should be an easier way around that.

Re: Ubuntu 26.04 Ends 46 Years of Silent sudo Passwords

#142

Fascinating . . . reading the comments, it seems like the vast majority think this is a long overdue change. For myself, it never occurred to me that there was any issue and I'm slightly unsettled by the change (i.e. it is far from obvious to me that it's a good thing). It is not something I've thought deeply about, of course.

I expect there's an audience selection bias at work: Fewer greybeards and more spiky haired teens reading HN.

I think it's an awful idea. Apart from making things less secure it also makes sudo's UX inconsistent with most of the other coreutils. Luckily, I don't plan on doing any more ubuntu installs.

Re: Ubuntu 26.04 Ends 46 Years of Silent sudo Passwords

#143

Modern password ui also gives the option to toggle the actual letters on so you can verify that you are actually typing the right thing. Hopefully that doesn't take another 46 years.

Oh yeah, let's echo passwords on-screen! Genius! What could possibly go wrong?

Re: Ubuntu 26.04 Ends 46 Years of Silent sudo Passwords

#144
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny. But I have to say the shaming of users who have different opinions or want to make different choices (the whole point of free software) is one of the saddest development in the free software world, such as the push for BSD replacements for GPL components, the entanglement of software components in general, or breaking of compatibility, etc. No matter whether you stand, that it is becoming harder to choose comp…

Sadly everyone wants convenience. Nobody hates MS because they are bad, they hate them because they are inconvenient. People are missing the fact that Google is exactly where MS was in the 90s and is most definitely as bad if not worse. I hate android sadly linux isn't looking too good rigt now on mobile. Devs are are missing the point with linux on phone. Get the point part working first lol so that people have some…

Mobile is a problem. I had a beautifully Linux phone once, the Nokia N9. It is incredibly sad knowing how the world could look.

Re: Ubuntu 26.04 Ends 46 Years of Silent sudo Passwords

#146
Secure keyboard tty entry interaction by the terminal should manage this rather than implement it in one app. Another advantage of this method is that such affordances can be generated or silenced locally, and it's code that can be shared when used with passwd, pinentry, etc. and sudo rather than implemented N times.

Re: Ubuntu 26.04 Ends 46 Years of Silent sudo Passwords

#147
When I wrote the login program for my VSTa microkernel, I took a page from the CDC side of the world--it echoes a _random_ (but small, non-zero) number of *'s. So you get feedback, but indeed peering over your shoulder will not disclose password length.

And yes, it remember how many it echoes so backspace works correctly.

Re: Ubuntu 26.04 Ends 46 Years of Silent sudo Passwords

#149
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny. But I have to say the shaming of users who have different opinions or want to make different choices (the whole point of free software) is one of the saddest development in the free software world, such as the push for BSD replacements for GPL components, the entanglement of software components in general, or breaking of compatibility, etc. No matter whether you stand, that it is becoming harder to choose comp…

Sadly everyone wants convenience. Nobody hates MS because they are bad, they hate them because they are inconvenient. People are missing the fact that Google is exactly where MS was in the 90s and is most definitely as bad if not worse. I hate android sadly linux isn't looking too good rigt now on mobile. Devs are are missing the point with linux on phone. Get the point part working first lol so that people have some…

* phone part
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