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elementary
Remove Open as Admin
This desktop action should go away to impeach users without knowledge to fuck their system
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When people select this option, they know what they are doing. If it f**ks up their system then they are the ones who are responsible, Also elementary usually gives an warning in the form of authentication. I also feel like a little more elaborate warning as what this action can do, might be of help to absolute rookies.
For example. You click 'New Window As Administrator' -> It opens and displays a MessageDialog warning you about the dangers.
Here normal user have no reason to do this, user with further needs can still use "pkexec pantheon-files" or even execute the commands mv/cp/rm from a command line with elevated rights
It's a nice thing to have for people with more advanced knowledge to make their workflow easier. I think it's good to assume that people are competent, and capable but sometimes not knowledgeable.
They can always run rm -rf / in the terminal to see what it does :).
No one is exempt from messing up their system.
Not having to use terminal for typical tasks is an indication of an elaborate desktop environment. What you propose is a step back. A scary authentication window with a warning is more than enough. If a user purposefully opened a root window, entered password and "accidentally" deleted few too important files, it's not a developer's fault. Spending development resources on making the system completely idiot-proof is a waste. At least on this stage.
I opened an issue - a proposal for improvement for Scratch to include a similar option like that. Someone implemented it and made a pull request but now it's held back because of this. Damn shame :(
Note this old branch: https://code.launchpad.net/~jeremywootten/pantheon-files/fix-1631982-run-as-admin-warning.
It has got left behind when we moved to GitHub but could be resurrected.
@Tidrek I don't know.
I would like elementary OS to more transparent on what design changes they're making in our OS :100: Don't leave us in the dark. We want to know what's going on as well.
No decision has been made on this issue and it is not under active discussion at the moment.
Recently in KDE they removed this option from dolphin. Now it's even impossible to run it as root from console. They said it's because of security issues that a file manager should never be run as root. But it's not so bad, because in Dolphin when you press F4, a console pops in inside the dolphin window. When you move from folder to folder, it changes path automatically. Then you press F4 again and it disappears.
The key feature is that it's just one button press, not right click -> open terminal here, and it's not a separate window, that I have to manage separately, it's a part of the file manager.
But something tells me, it will be much harder to implement this in eOS than it was in KDE and the quickest route for now is to give people what they want.
Tidrek: Maintaining a terminal and a filemanager in the same project is against elementaryos philosophy - but a single key press to open a terminal sounds like a good idea. Can you open another issue regarding this (if you wish)?
Running UI applications as root is not really supported under Wayland anyway, although that will only be relevant in Juno+1 (2020!).
I'm not sure how the proposed replacement (PolicyKit) works in detail, but maybe Files could behave as on macOS: If the user tries to make a filesystem change for which they lack permissions, an auth prompt appears automatically, and the actual operation then happens in a subprocess with root permissions. Basically automatic sudo for GUI applications.
I think this would be the best solution as it'd be future-proof, it'd get rid of the extra menu item, and users don't need to know whether they'll require root permissions before they open the window, they can just elevate as needed.
You are right, Files as admin is basically the same as Files as sudo. Also for some reason the normal FIles shows the root file system too but without write permissions to most of it. It would be a good idea to either hide the Root file system in the normal instance of Files or as @jlnr said, only prompt for password when any changes to such files are made to which normal access is denied.
Note that you can now use the gvfs admin backend as an alternative to opening Files as administrator. Typing admin:// into the pathbar opens a tab with admin permissions.