er, what exactly do you mean by "from the scratch"? and what exactly constitutes "my own system"? are you planning on designing your own logic circuits, manufacturing your own chips, and then writing your own firmware to run them?
this post was submitted on 31 Oct 2025
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@NaibofTabr@infosec.pub by scratch l meant installing linux os onto an old machine after cleaning up its entire past memories and then design it into a system of mine own.
OK, so you want to install Linux on an old laptop after wiping the hard drive.
Sure, you would have root control for that OS. Make sure that there is no BIOS/UEFI password set before you start, or that you have the password.
Do not use the root account for regular use, especially if you will be connecting this laptop to the Internet. Log in as a normal user account and escalate your privilege as needed.
I also highly recommend gparted for editing the hard drive partitions before you install the OS. Don't install goarted, just run it live from a USB drive.
Do you know which Linux distribution you want to install?
If you mean Linux, you are. You have the root or sudo password, don't you? If you mean your the root directory should be under your user name, then that is a very bad idea. I suggest you try it on a system you don't care about to find out why!
Yes, but that's a really bad situation from a security perspective. ideally you want two separate accounts: the admin who can do everything, and the daily driver whose activities cannot harm the system.
In the vast majority of operating systems the person who installs the system is by default the highest privileged user, in the case of some of those systems, that user is called root.
However, the word root is also used to describe the basis of several file systems.
Isn't secure boot something that can get in the way?
No.
Secure boot is about trusting which (signed) software is running.
TIL!