Destroying "only" your home directory (was Re: Newbie question on permissions)

[Matthew R. Dempsky]

On Sat, Apr 01, 2006 at 09:51:28PM +0100, Daniel Carrera wrote:
> If someone writes a Linux virus (difficult) and you open it with an app 
> running as root, or run it from a root terminal, it could destroy your 
> entire system. Otherwise, the most it can destroy is your home.

This is something that has always bugged me: privelege separation 
between root and users is primarily desirable for system administrators 
of multi-user machines, not single-user machines.

The system files on my laptop aren't of that much importance to me.  
Sure, it's an inconvenience to replace them, but that's no more 
difficult than installing in the first place.

The files in my $HOME directory are precisely the ones I'm most 
concerned about losing due to malice.