I found a (lengthy) guide to doing this but it is for gksu which is gone. I have to imagine there’s an easy way. I am running Ubuntu. There is no specific use case, it is just a feature I miss from windows.
EDIT: I always expect a degree of hostility and talking-down from the desktop Linux community, but the number of people in this thread telling me I am using my own computer that I bought with my own money in a way they don’t prefer while ignoring my question is just absurd and frankly should be deeply embarrassing for all of us. I have strongly defended the desktop Linux community for decades, but this experience has left a sour taste in my mouth.
Thank you to the few of you who tried to assist without judgement or assumptions.
I do not really see hostility or taking down. More of a difference of opinion or experience.
Also, this is not a private email thread. It is a public forum. Whatever advice you get risks becoming guidance for the community. I think it is perfectly reasonable, even responsible, for people to respond with their thoughts on security.
You can ignore the advice not to implement this capability on your personal machine. That is your call. However, this should not become standard practice by Linux users.
Thank you for answering at some point in the thread the use cases that drove your question. I was very curious.
When I have needed “Run as Administrator” in Windows, it has typically been to run the command line. The reason Windows needs this is because it has lacked “sudo”. The next release of Windows is adding it as a feature ( going the other way ).
I have used Linux for decades as well and really not needed this. Partially this is because tools that require root access are typically configured to ask for it already.
Your “need to delete a file” use case made sense to me but I do not run into it. Perhaps my file systems are mounted differently. Perhaps I am not manipulating files of other users ( sounds right ). Or maybe I am more likely to be at the command line. Your “edit files as root” use cases leads me to believe I use the command line more as that is certainly something I would be doing from the terminal. I have to edit files as root everyday but it is always from the terminal. I am not encountering files that I cannot edit in my file manager though as I would have navigated to those files in the terminal to begin with. Clicking around in a file manager to get to system files is not even something that would have occurred to me. If I am using the file manager, it is to manage my own files ( mostly media and documents ).
No judgement. Do things how you want. I was just curious what you were using this for. When I use Windows, I use “Run as Administrator” all the time. In Linux, I did not even notice it was missing. Going back to Windows makes me miss “sudo” in the terminal though. I am not the only one obviously as they are now adding it to Windows too.