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On Linux systems it is widely considered a best practice using the root account only on occasions that necessitate administrative privileges, or disabling it altogether and relying solely on sudo
to accomplish any task that requires elevated rights.
Now, while I can see the benefit of this mindset on an actual multi-user system, where the usage of the root account has the potential of catastrophic consequences for the data of every user of the system, and thus should be minimized, I don’t see any value in it on a single-user desktop system, since the real value here is of personal data which is fully available to the regular user account and thus vulnerable to accidents or attacks anyway. Safety of system files is not a real concern. On the other hand, having to request elevated rights for system administration is an obvious inconvenience.
Considering these, my question is whether there’s any other benefit of not using / any risk of using the root account as the primary user account on a single-user system.
The answer to this will differ from person to person, because it is largely one of opinion and individual practice/application. – Moses – 2013-10-27T01:39:30.690