First, you might be thinking, I’m an administrative user. Administration is my daily job. I should just be root.? Well, um, no. System admins frequently do things like write e-mails, browse the web, create office documents – things that generally don’t require any special privileges. You can do all these things as a regular user, and then use a command such as su or sudo to don your superhero cape when you need to perform system administration tasks. Browsing the web as a regular user is risky. Your regular user account is vulnerable to various malicious attacks. Browsing the web as the root user puts your whole system at risk. Even a simple file deletion as the root user can turn into a disaster if you’re not paying attention.
Web Webster has more than 20 years of writing and editorial experience in the tech sector. He’s written and edited news, demand generation, user-focused, and thought leadership content for business software solutions, consumer tech, and Linux Today, he edits and writes for a portfolio of tech industry news and analysis websites including webopedia.com, and DatabaseJournal.com.
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