> On a philosophical note, I second vortico's question of why common Linux distros require root access to be at all usable. In particular, how did it come to not being able to install a package without sudo?
TLDR; "You probably just realized that without the privileged ports restriction everything meaningful on a Unix system would not have to run as root and you could at the very least do a much better job of securing system services."
Thank you! This is the sole comment in the thread that answers the question I was asking.
Also from the article:
>Wait... sudo? Giving sudo rights means you might as well not have separate users at all.
>Bollocks!
...and how we got there is was my question.
Still, there's more mystery. Privileged ports can't explain why the user has to jump through the hoops for software that doesn't need to bind itself to ports.
So, how did it come to packages requiring sudo in most distros?
Previously:
http://adamierymenko.com/privileged-ports-are-causing-climat...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14712576
TLDR; "You probably just realized that without the privileged ports restriction everything meaningful on a Unix system would not have to run as root and you could at the very least do a much better job of securing system services."