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.
I think you are right that people want a solution to a problem they don’t have, but I think in this case they may just want to run executable files as sudo from a GUI.
Which program/files and from which GUI? Each GUI will have it’s own way of doing that, and on 99% of cases it’s not necessary. He consistently refuses to answer simple questions about what he’s ultimately trying to accomplish. I have a generic way of doing that, login with the root user. Do you think that’s a bad idea? Then list all of the reasons why using root as your main user is a bad idea and probably every single one will apply to what he wants as well. There’s a reason why programs that need root access ask for it and don’t expect you to run them with sudo, the “run as administrator” is a windows concept from an OS that doesn’t have a proper way to elevate privileges so programs can’t implement that API and you need to elevate the entire program.