root account

The root user, also known as the superuser or administrator, is a special user account in Linux used for system administration. It is the most privileged user on the Linux system and it has access to all commands and files. The root user can do many things an ordinary user cannot, such as installing new software, changing the ownership of files, and managing other user accounts.

It is not recommended to use root for ordinary tasks, such as browsing the web, writing texts, e.g. A simple mistake can cause problems with the entire system, for example if you mistype a command. It is advisable to create a normal user account for such tasks. If root permissions are needed, the su and sudo commands can be used.

For example, if we try to bring the eth0 interface down with an ordinary user, we will get the following message:

To be able to perform the command above, we need to use the su or sudo command. We will learn how to do that in the next lessons.