Understanding when to use root

In the last chapter, we set up our very own Ubuntu Server installation. During the installation process, we were instructed to create a user account as an administrator of the system. So, at this point, we should have two users on our server. We have the aforementioned administrative user, as well as root. We can certainly create additional user accounts with varying levels of access (and we will do so in this chapter), but before we get to that, some discussion is in order regarding the administrator account you created, as well as the root user that was created for you.

In regards to root, the root user account exists on all Linux distributions and is the most powerful user account on the planet. The root user account can be used to do anything, and I do mean anything. Want to use root to create files and directories virtually anywhere on the file-system? No problem. Want to use root to install software? Again, not a problem. The root account can even be used...