> You really don't need "user accounts" per se, but a way to restrict process privileges, of which user accounts is just a decent abstraction I contend that th

> You really don't need "user accounts" per se, but a way to restrict process privileges, of which user accounts is just a decent abstraction I contend that they really aren't. > The important bit is you can create a process that can't accidentally fandango on core and overwrite all the system files. And here's why: the system files are easily replicable, there's a copy on every OS installation media. My personal files exist in far fewer places and the OS does absolutely nothing to stop a malicious application from damaging them. See also: https://xkcd.com/1200/ https://xkcd.com/1200/ We call them user accounts because they are designed around isolating users from each other and the system, but that isn't what we care about in a personal computing context. It is possible to jerry-rig the kind of permission system we actually want using the user account system, but it has a lot of problems in practice because it isn't designed for that. It is not a good abstraction.