As I hope I’ve made apparent in these two links below, the proper way to launch a file browser as root in KDE is kdesu konqueror:
www.psychocats.net/ubuntu/permissions
www.psychocats.net/ubuntu/graphicalsudo
Unfortunately, in the KDE 4 version of Kubuntu 8.04, if you try to launch Konqueror (the file browser) or Kate (the text editor) with root (or administrative) permissions, you won’t be able to.
If you try kdesu konqueror, you’ll be told the command is not found.
So you’ll have to run the command with the explicit path to the executable:
kdesu /usr/lib/kde4/bin/konqueror
Likewise, the command kdesu kate will not be found.
So you’ll have to run the command
kdesu /usr/lib/kde4/bin/kate
to have it launch successfully.
By the way, I don’t know if there are any adverse side effects, but I believe you can restore the original functionality by symlinking the executables back to the normal path:
sudo ln -s /usr/lib/kde4/bin/kate /usr/bin/kate
sudo ln -s /usr/lib/kde4/bin/konqueror /usr/bin/konqueror
Thank you so much. That makes sense; I was just studying Linux stuff (preparing to eventually do the LPI exams) and your explanation makes sense to me now.
I see your tutorials are online still, but what happened to your essays?
Dude – Is your post title even in English?!?!? Clearly you know what you are talking about, though even if you didn’t I wouldn’t know the difference ;-)
@Jeremy
I get a kick out of helping people prepare for exams I would never be able to pass myself. Glad you found this useful.
@mc
The essays have all migrated to this blog. The tutorials are still at Psychocats.net
@Bruce Reyes-Chow
Yes, Linux lingo can seem like a different language, but you have sudo on the Mac, too. You just probably never use it!
You can have konqueror launched by adding the path of /usr/lib/kde4/bin $PATH environment variable.
Oh. Good point!
Hey awesome blog! Know anyone who would be interested in part time admin’ing a Linux box? Hit me up!
Thank you! This has been driving me crazy! There are so many HOWTOs that involve editing config files, assuming that it’s a trivial thing to do! BAD KUBUNTU!