Saturday, December 13, 2008

Change Your User Password

A member of our Ubuntu Mini 9 Google group, thawk, posted asking how to change his user password in Ubuntu. I didn't know, so I checked Ubuntu's Official Documentation, Ubuntu's Community Documentation and Google search. None of them offered much help, I only found complex solutions. Thankfully another Google group member, Ronald Schouten, was able to point me in the right direction. Hopefully other Ubuntu users will find this helpful.

First Go to System>Preferences>About Me
Screenshot


This will bring up the About User Menu, select Change Password in the upper right corner of the window.
Screenshot-About User


Enter your old password and click the Authenticate button.
Screenshot-Change password


Enter your new password twice and select Change password.
Screenshot-Change password-2

Have a question or problem that this article doesn't cover?
Ask our Ubuntu Mini 9 Google Group for help.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

why not use passwd from a shell?
man passwd

redDEAD said...

because this is the easiest way I found

Anonymous said...

Holy cow, a GUI interface, with authentication, no less, to change your password?

I've been in this business too long (30+ years, most of them using some form of unix (V6 through the latest Linux, and everything in between, most with kernel source access), now I've seen everything.

Any linux user, even a complete tyro, should know how to create a shell, and some basic commands.

sh, passwd, sync, df, ls, cd, chown, chgrp, top, vim|emacs|ed, sed, shutdown (and others) should all be in your toolbox.

redDEAD said...

Welcome to the NEW Linux old timer. I agree I used the command line to change user passwords, didn't know there was a gui.

Anonymous said...

But what if you don't remember the original password? This is my problem. I've read advice from other websites and they don't seem to work, I think because they are writing about other versions of Ubuntu.

Can anybody help? Thanks!

Anonymous said...

Hi. I like the proc. but it's taking too long to authenticate. Please reply

FreeAllFrogs said...

Read the comments and you'll see why we have a problem and the problem is us.

Are we "selling" the world on how to be us or are we "selling" the world on Linux/Unbuntu?

I have two newbies coming over from computer crashes on XP and 2000. Do I stop and make them learn all about shell commands before I get them back on line?

I do not think so. Not if I am to get them to convert to Ubuntu vs go back to some Microsoft product.

As is now this is not a intuitive place my newbies looked to change their passwords and I had to look it up.

Users need their computers to work so that they can do their jobs not to be reeducated to do our jobs.