/usr/sbin not in $PATH causing problems

I'm finding this so annoying. Apparently the command "su" is no longer to be used, but rather "su -", to access root. And that is fine, yet this change is causing problems. I gathered that bit information from this bug report, which states,

Quote:

While I no longer maintain util-linux I'm directly responsible for making the change. This change is intentional and aligns su with its documented behaviour. I would also like to stress that using plain 'su' is DANGEROUS because it means you're running a shell as root with the environment inherited from another user. [..] I've already tagged this bug report 'wontfix' and hope the above explanation is clear enough as to why I'm closing this bug report. Regards, Andreas Henriksson

Which is fine except it makes it difficult to run things. I installed gufw (firewall program) and it's not working properly. Synaptic is difficult to start:

Code:mark@debian:~$ su -
Password:
root@debian:~# synaptic
Unable to init server: Could not connect: Connection refused
Failed to initialize GTK.

Probably you're running Synaptic on Wayland with root permission.
Please restart your session without Wayland, or run Synaptic without root permission
root@debian:~#Without "Wayland"? What does that even mean? [edit] I did look this up, and apparently it has something to do with the "gnome-shell". But, I never installed gnome, and run things via "startx". Regardless I tried the following command to be sure:

Code:mark@debian:~$ killall gnome-shell
gnome-shell: no process found
mark@debian:~$ su -
Password:
root@debian:~# killall gnome-shell
gnome-shell: no process found
root@debian:~#
root@debian:~# exit
logout
mark@debian:~$ su
Password:
root@debian:/home/mark# killall gnome-shell
gnome-shell: no process found
root@debian:/home/mark#Anyway, the main thing I notice is that neither /sbin nor /usr/sbin are in the $PATH, which has presented challenges running programs that are located there. Synaptic is one such program, though I notice that a file named "synaptic-pkexec" does reside in /usr/bin. But I get the same result when I try to run this. I note it stated, "or run Synaptic without root permission. So, I tried that, with the following result:

Code:mark@debian:~$ synaptic
bash: synaptic: command not found
mark@debian:~$ synaptic-pkexec
==== AUTHENTICATING FOR com.ubuntu.pkexec.synaptic ===
Authentication is required to run the Synaptic Package Manager
Authenticating as: root
Password:
polkit-agent-helper-1: error response to PolicyKit daemon: GDBus.Error:org.freedesktop.PolicyKit1.Error.Failed: No session for cookie
==== AUTHENTICATION FAILED ===
Error executing command as another user: Not authorized

This incident has been reported.
mark@debian:~$So, I tried a variety of ways to start Synaptic, and finally was able to... observe:

Code:mark@debian:~$ su -
Password:
root@debian:~# /usr/sbin/synaptic
Unable to init server: Could not connect: Connection refused
Failed to initialize GTK.

Probably you're running Synaptic on Wayland with root permission.
Please restart your session without Wayland, or run Synaptic without root permission
root@debian:~# cd /usr/sbin
root@debian:/usr/sbin# ./synaptic
Unable to init server: Could not connect: Connection refused
Failed to initialize GTK.

Probably you're running Synaptic on Wayland with root permission.
Please restart your session without Wayland, or run Synaptic without root permission
root@debian:/usr/sbin# exit
logout

mark@debian:~$ su
Password:
root@debian:/home/mark# /usr/sbin/synapticSo, that last one worked, using the supposedly incorrect "su" rather than "su -". But I notice other programs, like ufw (gufw), as I mentioned before, don't work. [edit] And apparently the synaptic stuff is a bug from years back. Yeesh.

If anyone has any insights about fixing this, do share.

I'm running Debian 10 on a MacBook Pro laptop (5.5, from like 2010, with 4 GB RAM), using IceWM. I access IceWM via "startx", rather than a display manager.