The default user list

[gentleman]

Hey folk,

I looked at the /etc/passwd to get a list of users which are not needed anymore and can be deleted for security reasons. I wondered why there are so many accounts which are (yet seems like) not used.
Okay, I say the bin-user is probarbly required to execute some binaries, but which??

And:

• daemon
  
• adm
  
• lp (printer?)
  
• sync (portage?)
  
• mail
  
• news
  
• uucp
  
• operator
  
• postmaster
  
• smmsp
  

There are many of which I have no idea what they are ever used for. All of them have no results on:

[desultory]

Moved from Installing Gentoo to Networking & Security.

[RoundsToZero]

Welcome to decades-old Unix history, recreated for your pleasure in GNU/Linux. In most or all of the cases you mention, the shell should be set to /bin/false and the password to heaven only knows what and the account possibly even locked. Any one of those things mean that there's not much security benefit in deleting the user, and you might even break something unexpected. If you're really paranoid about network logins, set your sshd to only allow logins from real users. In fact that's a good idea anyway to keep SSH spammers from trying to log in directly as root.

Edit: For more information on particular users, Google unix username user or unix username account.