Changing your Password

You have been given an excellent password for your computer. Even so, you may wish to change it. If so, it's easy using the Terminal. Here's how.

• Open the Terminal.
• At the prompt, type "passwd" without the quotes. You 'll be prompted with the line, "Current password:" Enter your current password and then press "Enter". Keep in mind that as always with the terminal you won't see any action of any kind when entering passwords. This doesn't mean your keyboard isn't working.
• If you've entered your password correctly, you'll be asked to enter a new password. Do so and press the "Enter" key.
• You'll be asked to verify your new password by entering it one more time. Do so and press the "Enter" key.
• If you've entered correctly, you're done! You'll be informed your password has been reset. Be sure to remember what it is or you won't be able to login. Linux is strict like that.
• Type "exit" at the $ prompt if you want to quit the terminal.

Be AWARE

As system user, your password is a critical. Being a solid operating system, the weak link in the security chain for Linux is the password, especially a user with system level privileges.

Go to this site before choosing a new password. You can play around a little here and learn a lot. Enter different passwords and click on "Check!" to see how crackable they are. The password you have been given is considered safe, requiring a medium size botnet about 40 years to crack it, or millions and millions of years for the average computer. By then you'll probably have moved on.

Your Linux system has not been set to disallow passwords if they don't have combinations of symbols, upper and lower case letters and numbers. While using such can make for a harder to crack password, they also can be much harder to remember.

There are other ways to do things. While single words or obvious combinations in any language should be avoided, combinations of words, sentences, or passwords based on these can be very strong. Check it out!. If you know or speak a unique and little known dialect of a non-English language, a password based on a sentence might be strong and easy to remember. Test them.

In short, research ways of chosing a strong password and use it. If you notice unwanted behavoir on your computer that makes you feel like you are not the only one there, you may not have to look any further than a poor password as the source of your problem.