Limit Your Linux Super Powers With su & sudo

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.