On running gui applications as root

[Bastien Nocera]

----- Original Message -----
> Recently, I filed a bug (1274451) about running virt-manager on Wayland.
> As it turns out that this is applicable to running gui applications as
> root on Wayland in general, the scope was changed (see Cole's comments).
> 
> As Halfline points out, the decision needs to be made whether to allow
> gui applications to be run as root.  I figured I'd bring this up for
> discussion in the hopes that a decision may be made whether or not to
> allow this.
> 
> In the instance that the decision is made to not allow gui applications
> root access, then we will also need to figure out a sane way to have
> applications that require more than the usual set of user priviledges to
> continue to work across multiple compositors and window managers that
> may or may not have the necessary authentication agents built-in.

We already have those mechanisms: polkit (né PolicyKit) and D-Bus.

This is how we control backlights, LEDs, network connections, Bluetooth,
geolocalisation, etc. in a standard Linux desktop.

Cheers