Why has there never been a 'single-user' version of Linux?

[bgoodwin91006]

I like the idea of the system allowing only one user, one keyboard, one mouse etc as long as it mult-tasks. That is, a personalized version. There are only two logins on my system; root and my personal login. That's all there will ever be. My login includes 'sudo-user' group so even the root login is superfluous.

To be truly 'one-user' is more than just not adding other users. it also means not allowing that one user login to be invoked more than once. This is where some thought would need to be focused to achieve a true single user system. You would still need to be able to invoke tasks that require a password while preventing a second login event or perhaps suspending password requirements; just reminders when doing something that effects the system. It would mean not permitting remote actions such as rpc (remote procedure calls) or remote desktop viewing.

Journaling could be done away with since it is mainly a system administrator's tool for spying on what users are up to. The syslog, apt log, and a few other logs generally provides as much information as will be available when bad things happen on the system.

Many vulnerabilities found on Linux as well as Unix and other OS's over the years have been predicated on having a malicious user.

Anyway, It's just a thought and perhaps not worth the time and effort necessary to make it happen. It's just a thought that occurs over and over in my mind. "What if ..."

Best regards,
Bob G.

[Koentje]

Until you get into some problems related to your account and you can't access your system anymore. Would be nice to have a backup account... to test things. Just saying. I always have a second account for this.

[t42]

There are only two logins on my system; root and my personal login. That's all there will ever be

You never was alone and never will be, to list most of the users on your system run

Code: Select all

awk -F':' '{ print $1}' /etc/passwd

or

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cat /etc/passwd

[t42]

Why has there never been a 'single-user' version of Linux?

There is and you have it. Press "e" while in the Grub menu and modify the line that starts with “linux” . Change the “ro” to “rw” and add “init=/bin/bash” (3) at the end of the line. Click F10 to boot into single user mode.

[The Muffin Man]

There has never been a single user OS for a personal computer since Win95.

[lsemmens]

What's the issue? Set up one user on you computer and be done with it. Each and every one of my computers is single user only. Admin approval is required before any major alterations so it is inherently way more secure that any version of Windows - ever!

[t42]

What's the issue? Set up one user on you computer and be done with it
.

Probably it is about OS architecture. Linux is a multi-user OS, no matter what. Just look at your process explorer.

55.png (9.57 KiB) Viewed 914 times

To get true single-user OS you need to go back 40 years to CP/M-86 and DR DOS 5 although at the time such multi-user OSes as MP/M-86 were already available.

[Hoser Rob]

Linux is essentially a free version of Unix. Unix came out in 1975, and multi user capability was baked into Unix from the start. That's not going to change, esp. because what you suggest wouldn't make any difference (or sense) at all.

[bgoodwin91006]

Thank you all for responding. Your responses were interesting, well thought out and represent the question viewed from several different perspectives. I was of course referring to human logins when speaking of 'single-user'. From that narrower perspective, some time spent reflecting on what's needed to
actually meet the varied interests of the lone user seems to reveal some aspects of the overall system are not needed and may even make a system more vulnerable to unwanted tracking, accessing, and the over use of authenticating.

In the end, A single-user distro would be a niche for a probably small user base requiring a large effort to create and still needing the maintenance typical of other distro's. One thing that would be good and not too demanding would be something that early RedHad distros did; the installer iso divided the installation into categories and subcategories such that you had several levels of detail regarding what you wanted to install. If you just wanted to say 'go' you could, or you could pick a major category such as graphics (a typical generic install) or server. You could then pick from subcategories all the way down to individual files or say 'go' from the current level. I know this makes for more work for setting up methods to automate creating an iso so I won't be asking the Mint devs and maintainers, I'm just saying it was nice while it lasted.

Best regards
Bob G.

[billyswong]

There were times the graphical shell hanged. I then switched tty2, text-logined there and did some rescue. In your "single-user" vision, you are suggesting a ban of such feature.

[t42]

In the end, A single-user distro would be a niche for a probably small user base requiring a large effort to create and still needing the maintenance typical of other distro's.

As it was hinted in the same comments, Linux is in an essential way a multi-user system. You need to completely change kernel architecture, systemd, modify thousand applications and, probably file system as well to render Linux to a single-user status.
Historically a word distribution is implying Linux operation system. For me it would be fine just to change phrase "a single-user distro" to "a single-user operating system".

[spamegg]

One thing that would be good and not too demanding would be something that early RedHad distros did; the installer iso divided the installation into categories and subcategories such that you had several levels of detail regarding what you wanted to install. If you just wanted to say 'go' you could, or you could pick a major category such as graphics (a typical generic install) or server.

Some old-school distros like Slackware and Debian (which was a Slackware fork at first) still do that (to some degree). Also vanilla Arch lets you customize it as you like. If you want, you can install specific packages for "deeper detail", or install "bundle packages" that install multiple packages for, say, graphics etc.

There are also more modern distros that let you do that AFTER the iso installation, when you boot first time into the desktop. They have "software selection welcome screen apps" for lack of a better term.

[t42]

Some old-school distros like Slackware and Debian (which was a Slackware fork at first)...

I'm not sure about that. Slackware was announced a year earlier than Debian and Slackware was a fork of SLS. SLS package management was so bad that Ian Murdock decided there was a need to do something better. Debian was his 1993 original creation.

From portal!imurdock Mon Aug 16 06:31:03 1993
Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.development
Path: portal.imurdock
From: imurdock@shell.portal.com (Ian A Murdock)
Subject: New release under development; suggestions requested
Message-ID: <CBusDD.MIK@unix.portal.com>
Sender: news@unix.portal.com
Nntp-Posting-Host: jobe.unix.portal.com
Organization: Portal Communications Company -- 408/973-9111 (voice) 408/973-8091 (data)
Date: Mon, 16 Aug 1993 13:05:37 GMT
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Fellow Linuxers,

This is just to announce the imminent completion of a brand-new Linux release,
which I'm calling the Debian Linux Release. This is a release that I have put
together basically from scratch; in other words, I didn't simply make some
changes to SLS and call it a new release. I was inspired to put together this
release after running SLS and generally being dissatisfied with much of it,
and after much altering of SLS I decided that it would be easier to start
from scratch. The base system is now virtually complete (though I'm still
looking around to make sure that I grabbed the most recent sources for
everything), and I'd like to get some feedback before I add the "fancy" stuff.
...

[Hoser Rob]

... Journaling could be done away with since it is mainly a system administrator's tool for spying on what users are up to. The syslog, apt log, and a few other logs generally provides as much information as will be available when bad things happen on the system....

I'm afraid that makes no sense whatsoever.