Guest sessions in 18.04 LTS - are they needed?

I used this feature a lot. I miss him. If you can return, it will be very good!

  1. I see Ubuntu used in the wild in various places in ā€œkiosksā€ and guest sessions are valuable for them. Without guest sessions, theyā€™d probably end up using something other than Ubuntu, and thatā€™d be bad for Ubuntu evangelism.

  2. I have authorisation to too many important things (including, for example, issuing automatic updates to all Ubuntu users!) for it to be safe for me to lend my logged-in laptop to anyone else. So a browserā€™s private browsing mode is not enough.

  3. Ubuntu evangelism again: if I can lend my laptop to a guest (which for me requires guest sessions due to the previous point), then that helps spread Ubuntu.

  4. As a power user, guests may find it difficult to use my setup. Guest sessions step around this problem nicely. A guest will generally get the same experience on any Ubuntu laptop borrowed from anyone.

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To customize the guest session I had another account called ā€œtemplateā€ that I would make my changes in and in ā€œ/etc/guest-session/prefs.shā€ Iā€™d have the following lines.
cp -rT /home/template ā€œ$HOMEā€
chown -R $USER:$USER ā€œ$HOMEā€

Iā€™ve only used it a couple of times so far, so removing this feature for 18.04 LTS it would be ok for me.

Point in favor: it allows testing something with default settings or launching something untrusted without access to your data.

I used it, but only a couple of times.

Iā€™ve used it, but really only for people who were trusted enough to get their own account anyway.

And itā€™s not so hard to just do adduser guest

If itā€™s a toss-up between this and global menusā€¦ do global menus.

If you know what Couchsurfing is, then you know that the guest session is a must :slight_smile::slight_smile:
Itā€™s perfect for letting random guests use your home PC.

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I prefer GNOME desktop, but on presentations and workshops I realy like booting into Unity desktop just because of using guest session for security reasons while handing over my laptop to strangers. It would be great to use a secure guest session on GNOME desktop.

I use the guest-session quite often. The lack of it in 17.10 is actually one of the reasons I use 16.04. I mostly use it for quickly giving access of my computer to friends. Or to try a program in a neutral environment. I know that people for whom I have installed Ubuntu also make use of the feature. The progressing removal of ui-features is quite alarming to me. Thank you for taking the time to ask.

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I have never used guest session and I donā€™t miss it.

The guest account is something Iā€™ve missed a lot already since switching to Ubuntu Gnome in 17.04. Itā€™s not a feature that sees daily use, but it is immensely useful for letting people briefly use my desktop or laptop without having to worry about my personal data being an alt-tab away. Incognito mode in Chrome only works as a substitute when I can spare the attention to see what theyā€™re doing.

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I have always had guest session as part of my Ubuntu installation, since I too stick to LTS releases.
I use guest session both as a host and as a guest - as a host on my own PC for friends and family, and as a guest on public computers at libraries.
Please do keep the guest session feature. Thanks.

I have maintained a tutorial about how to customize the guest session feature, and closely followed the guest session related questions at Ask Ubuntu. My impression is that common use cases are classes in education contexts and various kiosk setups.

Personally I often use the guest session when providing user support. ā€œPlease enter a guest session and check if the issue is present there too.ā€ So I find it useful for that purpose, and for tracking certain bugs.

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Yes, we make use of the guest session for some of our guests that need to use our office computer. Having a guest session menu enable/disable in Ubuntu settings would be useful.

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I believe that switch to GNOME is one of the most challenging tasks for Ubuntu for last several years. Ubuntu and Ubuntu-based distributives are the face of GNU/Linux OS for neophytes. Market Share of GNU/Linux systems significantly increased during the last decade and Ubuntu made a major contribution for that. Many users, which started with Ubuntu now are developing GNU/Linux systems. I believe that Ubuntu must be more and more user-friendly and I think that everyone is interested in the seamless transition in GNOME desktop environment. So I believe that you can sacrifice the guest regime and save some efforts for some more critical issues and maybe introduce guest regime later if it will be really needed.

I think it is usefull and needed. How would you otherwise share a PC securely? Esp. if you yourself are not present to control what the other person is doing?
I have used it a lot for a neighbour who does not own a laptop (he moved now) but think that the feature is esp. usefull for poorer countries.

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Yes, I need it - the learners I work with donā€™t always have a PC with them (for various reasons) and I need a way for them to use the multiple PCs I can lend them without their (or my) login details and other personal information leaking.

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Guest Login is a must. Use it when lending out PC and it has actually won over a few Windows users.

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Iā€™d prefer no guest sessions by default, but maybe an option somewhere in Settings to enable it (or even to create or enable a guest session in user manager?).

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yes, is good, guest session must have, thanks