• Limonene@lemmy.world
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    15 hours ago

    When you switch to an admin account on Windows, there are still files owned by “TrustedInstaller” that you can’t touch, and processes owned by “System” that you can’t terminate.

    Linux doesn’t have that. When you switch to root, you can kill any process. You can modify or delete any file.

    • MonkeMischief@lemmy.today
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      14 hours ago

      Sometimes (often?) at your own peril!

      To anyone else following, if you’re mucking around with “I am Root/Admin. OBEY ME!!” you had better have important data backed up!

      I once thought an unlisted BTRFS snapshot was an orphan folder taking up space. No permission? Nonsense! Obey my commands!

      Suddenly not even terminal commands worked. (“Command ‘cd’/‘ls’/whatever not found”)

      . . . it was the “writable snapshot” currently mounted, and the system was so borked it couldn’t rollback, and I needed to completely reinstall.

      Fortunately I had things backed up on another drive. Live and learn! But that could have been TRAGIC.