Unprivileged User Mode For The Welcome Splash Screen

Thoughts & Feedback
1

Hi

The other day I had a meeting with the IT dept at my university. I’m attempting to get them to adopt Ubuntu MATE instead of standard Ubuntu for the Linux workstations we have here. (And btw, It’s looking good for the second semester of the next school year)

A thought crossed my mind: what does Welcome looks like when you are a standard user?
(As that’s what the students will be)
So I created a dummy account on my machine so I could see for myself.

:arrow_right: It appears not much at all is changing in Welcome

Here’s what I think would be a good thing:

  • When Welcome detects that the User is not in any admin group (adm | sudo), it enters an “Unprivileged” mode.
  • Any action that requires authentication to an admin account is removed ( Getting Started section should show only the “Familiarity” and “Troubleshooting” categories
  • The Software boutique should enter a ‘gallery’ mode in which only installed software is listed, and no admin action (removal, reinstall) is proposed

What do you guys think?
Cheers

4 Likes
2

That’s a good idea, thanks for sharing. :slight_smile:

The guest session already enters a “reduced” mode already, but we could further develop this for standard users too.

You can try this if you like:

ubuntu-mate-welcome --force-session=guest
3 Likes
3

I didn’t know about that option and just tried it! It’s pretty cool, thanks for the tip. ^^

1 Like