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.

  • @lurch
    21•23 days ago

    AFAIK the newer Ubuntu gksu equivalent is pkexec, if that helps.

    You could copy all system .desktop files to your home dir and automatically edit them with a script that adds an action to run them with pkexec or sudo as root. However, most GUI apps should never be run as root, because they can break the system. For example, they may create hidden thumbnail files owned by root and break thumbnails in all apps not running as root that way

    • JediwanOP
      2•23 days ago

      Thanks, I’ll give it a shot. I don’t want it to always run everything as root, just on rare occasions.