Comment 13 for bug 200868

I fully agree! The problem is just that the user probably won't know which settings that require xorg.conf write-acess (and shouldn't need to!). Seeing that nvidia-settings doesn't use any kind of privilege escalation system, the user might get stuck with an error after changing settings. Assuming that there is consensus about such error being unacceptable, I only see 2 immediate solutions:

1) Patch nvidia-settings to use privilege escalation (Policy-Kit?)
2) Always run nvidia-settings with superuser access

Personally, I'd prefer solution 1), but if that is too much work then 2) seems acceptable to me as well. 2) isn't ideal, as you point out, but still better than throwing write-access errors in my opinion.