Comment 5 for bug 1469122

Launching apps with gksudo is deprecated. Running the app complete as root (sudo) is not recommended as it is not as safe as pkexec.

Policykit (pkexec) is the recommended method for escalating privileges. From the pkexec docs "The environment that PROGRAM will run it, will be set to a minimal known and safe environment in order to avoid injecting code through LD_LIBRARY_PATH or similar mechanisms. In addition the PKEXEC_UID environment variable is set to the user id of the process invoking pkexec"