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.
This is very easy in KDE but Desktop entries work the same on all Desktops.
See this post where I mentioned how to do this with running Konsole with root.
In general, use polkit instead of sudo, every desktop has a GUI dialog that pops up.
And add this as a desktop action, following the guide.
[Desktop Entry] Type=Application Exec=konsole Icon=utilities-terminal Categories=System;TerminalEmulator; Actions=root Name=Konsole GenericName=Terminal Comment="$GenericName" [Desktop Action root] Name=root Icon=folder-root-symbolic Exec=pkexec konsoleIn the specific case of Konsole you could use a profile instead.
Be aware that nearly no program should be ran as root. Also not Konsole. The program is ran as the user, and can enter a root shell, but never run random apps as root. Not even many terminal apps are made to be ran as root, for example use
sudoeditinstead ofsudo nanofor editing files.To view and change system files in KDE, type
admin:/into the location bar.Running apps as root doesnt work with Wayland, and for a good reason.
Thanks for this, but I have a question:
Are you sure about this? I run GUI apps as root all the time and have Wayland.
Not sure if all apps, maybe some work, maybe they use XWayland. Dont do this.