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.

  • JediwanOP
    0•8 months ago

    I know. That’s what I’ve been doing for years. I could also just sudo gedit file directory filename but it’s SO much easier to right-click “open as admin” which is why I asked.

    • @Nibodhika
      2•8 months ago

      That is the 1% I mentioned, and the easiest way is installing this https://github.com/nautilus-extensions/nautilus-admin which I think is in the apt repos, so probably sudo apt install nautilus-admin works.

      But I STRONGLY encourage you NOT to install this, you’ve already made a mess of permissions on your computer that by your own account caused you many headaches by running graphical programs with sudo without any need.

    • @[email protected]
      1•8 months ago

      I would suggest right-click in the folder in your file explorer -> open in terminal -> sudo nano autocomplete file name (tab tab). At least to me that doesn’t seem that much more involved and is safer. Otherwise, as others have noted, there are apparently ways of doing what you want, but it is discouraged for good reasons.