On 2015-02-04, Valeri Galtsev <galtsev at kicp.uchicago.edu> wrote: > On Wed, February 4, 2015 10:18 am, Keith Keller wrote: >> On 2015-02-04, James B. Byrne >> <byrnejb at harte-lyne.ca> wrote: [SNIP] >> (Users with sudo can still get a root shell, but that's >> not the same as logging in as root.) >> >> I thought Ubuntu did this as well, but I haven't installed Ubuntu for >> quite a while. Anyone know? > > Yes, Debian and its clones have full fledged root account, only with empty > password hash (thus making it account for which no password will match). > You can enable it by grabbing root shell using sudo, then using command > passwd to set password. voila. > The behaviour you describe is to be found on Ubuntu, but not Debian. The Debian installer prompts for a root password, whereas the Ubuntu installer does not. The 'sudo' package is optional (in APT terminology) in the case of Debian. -- Liam