I've been meaning to ask for quite a long time now.
But why is Guest Session Enabled by default on a clean installation of Ubuntu Mate? (22.10 for example) it would probably be a better idea to have a tickbox during setup to enable it or enabling it through settings post-install? even though the guest session is stripped down i worry that it could be a potential security hole and that it should not be enabled by default.
1 Like
I agree that the "guest" account should be something the individual user sets up if they desire, not auto enabled.
This has actually led to a bit of confusion recently for me on this latest install of Mate (MATE 1.26.0).
Being inclined to discover new things I decided to install as the "OEM" version and see if it operated smoother than other installations I have done. I noticed during the process though that as an OEM you are given the opportunity to encrypt the disk the OS is installed on through the set-up and initialization of the OEM account.
Once completed and the "prepare for shipping to end user" displayed I set up a user account with just a UN and password. Every time I boot up the system though the first thing it wants is the OEM encrypted disk password, which it seems the end user the device is shipped too wouldn't have access too?
1 Like
I agree, the user must be told that the guest user account is enabled by default, and act consequently.
2 Likes
It is still around. and its making it hard to recommend Ubuntu MATE Like this.
please change this to be off by default
Guest Session is pretty easy to disable on 22.04 LTS
sudo>pluma>etc>ligthdm>lightdm.config
Just change < autologin-guest=true> to =false.
4 Likes
yeah. its not that it is hard.
but its another step you have to do only in Ubuntu MATE/MATE
and really it should be off by default from a security standpoint.
I agree with you, which is why I disable it. I am the only one that ever uses my laptop so have no use of a guess session. It is a parent company Ubuntu thing too, which may be why Ubuntu Mate leaves it. I am not sure how much control Ubuntu has over Ubuntu official flavors. There are more things I am not happy about with Ubuntu, like snaps be forced on us, and os-prober being disabled by default if you want to dual boot. There are options, and like many here I am exploring them. Not sure which way I will go, because I like the 12 years of support. Right now I am also using Mint Mate and Sparky semi-rolling Mate. As long as I can do what I want, I like Ubuntu Mate best, but if I am forced to do what I don't want, that will change. I don't expect all I want by default, only that I have the choice of customizing what I want.
2 Likes