As someone who's completely ignorant of the underlying nuts and bolts, I'd like to offer some thoughts in the hope that I'm not being a perfect idiot. I am aware of the old programming adage that nothing is impossible to the person who doesn't have to write the software.

1. Would it be possible to modify esudo (or some other component) to produce an error message or notification when the user tries to run one of these affected programs? Simply dying in silence isn't really a good idea under any circumstances so not producing an error message isn't really acceptable.

2. Since Stefan's solution is a minor textual change to a text file in a standard directory, would it be possible to write a program which is triggered by the user and which makes this edit without requiring the user to type anything (other than the program name)?

3. If both are possible, can the error message produced by (1) tell the user to try running (2)?

4. In my limited experience with the Xfce desktop, IIRC there's an option to right click on a program icon and pull a dialog box which offers access to their equivalent of the .desktop file. Perhaps something like this could be offered, with the option to click a button to add/remove "pkexec" on the exec line?? Even without this button, it's a feature that I think many users would find handy for easier tweaking of their systems.

you can edit the desktop file indirectly from moksha, but only if the app actually opens, not when it's crashing, so not useful in this case. But when it works, click on the icon on the very top left of any open window and go to edit icon. Whatever you change there is affecting the .desktop file. I've used that to quickly add switches to programs, like --fullscreen or whatever.

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Nothing particularly dumb about any of this nor is there anything particularly hard to code.

Sure that is possible but wouldn't it be better to just go ahead and run it? Easier to code also. But I have sorta not wanted to do that as I would prefer some way for esudo to not break pkexec/policy kit as pkexec allows for a more fine tuning of administration/root permissions. That is why it has replaced gksudo in Ubuntu. And why is "dying in silence " not really a good idea? esudo started off a substitute for gksudo but using EFL instead of gtk. gksudo also dies in silence when started with a command that fails to execute. So why is this not acceptable? It seems traditional. eSudo invoked for these problematic apps shows the command in the top input field and it is clear that the command to be execute will not execute. At least clear if you know anything about what is going on.

Bodhi is not and never has been a distro for beginning Linux users who expect everything to be idiot proof, stable, easy to use, and everything to work out of the box for nearly all users. Bodhi is minimal meaning you are going to have to install some things, or load some extra modules or modify this or that to get some stuff to work. Printing for example requires you install cups. Stability depends upon the stability of EFL itself and EFL is under and has been under some fairly serious development. In fact EFL from git may or may not even compile and if it compiles may or may not even function correctly. That is why Bodhi sticks with an EFl version and seldom updates it in a release unless we update it in a 'Testing' repo.

I could go on with this with more examples but back to the issue at hand. eSudo even with its 'flaws' fits in with the vision Jeff has for what Bodhi is. Failing silently for invalid commands has never bothered any of us (the devs that bring you this distro.) If you don't like eSudo remove it and revert back to using pkexec properly ... note this requires you set moksha up to do so. And removing esudo may not be as easy as uninstalling it. This also fits with our philosophy as you are free to do with Bodhi what you want to do.

It should be noted that if you don't like the way something works in Bodhi patches accepted. Patches may or may not be implemented but we will look at them and consider them. If you can't code then we will consider suggestions but realize ultimately everything is up to Jeff and to a less extent the other bodhi devs. It is true most of us have a lot of leeway, Jeff usually lets me alter things as I see fit. This pretty much the way everything works in all Linux distros. Again you are free to do what you want to your own installation.

Possible yes, good idea unlikely. Note any change to a programs desktop file may be overwritten by an update. It would be better to add the desktop file to the users folder as opposed to a system folder. But anyway ... Personally I also don't want to change how an app works in another desktop environment. And this whole idea is rather 'hackish' and not really the kind of solution I have in mind.

Right click where? In Moksha menu? Then that becomes a non trivial change and again a rather hackish solution. In pcmanfms file dialog, well feel free to write a script for that. I think one can add users scripts to pcmanfm. If not find another file manage that allows that.

But overall eSudo as it currently is has not been considered a major issue for Bodhi. We have more pressing matters to deal with. We are a small distro and most of the coding lately has been done by stefan or me. In whatever time span we have free to work on it. Our work is more or less for free, we would love more developers and we would love some real funding but it is what it is.

Regardless this particular eSudo issue has been in a list of Bodhi issues I personally keep and in time I will look for a better solution. Sorry but for now it is low priority

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Well, I shan't pile any more pressure on you. We do appreciate the work you're all putting in.

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