One of the reasons the FP is my first smartphone is I just wouldn’t accept a locked device.
I’m definitely happy with what I see, and found a small flock of open-source utilities that quietly allow me to filter unexpected intrusions (ads along with “auto-updates”) and block unwanted info disclosures.
Still, I didn’t really play with the Terminal yet.
My question is : what is FP root password (if any), can I change it, and won’t this affect the machine behavior (in future system upgrades for instance)…
There is none. If you type “su” into your terminal, the FP just ask you, as usual, if you want to grant superuser rights to the terminal app. Of course every time you use a terminal app, it’s your own responsibility if you mess up the system or not (and make future updates impossible…) ;).
I think the way Android is handling superuser rights is one of the big differences (improvements?) between common linux systems.
OK, after some searching I found an instructive summary there (the posts by noobkiller).
I now understand the witty trick which allocates a separate user id to each application, cleanly ‘sandboxing’ them as one would say today, and I also understand all the conventional linux password-related structures are eliminated from Android -at least, such was the status in early 2013 at the time of the post.
Unless there have been more formal developments incorporating what ‘noobkiller’ has compiled on his own, I find myself alone with this no-root-password Android…
