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.
You have no idea what that would do in Linux. First read some documentation, then decide if you really need it. I guess you can see by the number of people trying to put you on the right path that what you want is not a good idea.
I’m not a child with a machine gun, I just don’t want to go to the terminal every time.
Then let us address the underlying issue. You should not need root for the majority of tasks and never for desktop usage.
It sounds like something got messed up when you ran a different program as root.