The consensus among new Unix and Linux users seems to be that sudo is more secure than using the root account, because it requires you type your password to perform potentially harmful actions. In reality, a compromised user account, which is no big deal normally, is instantly root in most setups.

Lordy, lordy, lordy. They have no shame. It appears that Microsoft has just patented sudo, a personalized version of it. Here it is, patent number 7617530. Thanks, USPTO, for giving Microsoft, which is already a monopoly, a monopoly on something that's been in use since 1980 and wasn't invented by Microsoft.

The compelling thing to me about Ubuntu was that I kept seeing information on the web about how to do various things in Ubuntu. One issue that previously gave me reservations about Ubuntu was the whole thing with disabling the root account in favor of extensive use of sudo.

If you use sudo to run commands as root, you've probably run into “permission denied” problems when only part of a pipeline or part of a command is running with root permissions.

A look at various ways to secure the root account against system users and some in-use methods that seem to cause more harm than good.

The file /etc/sudoers, has the rules that users have to follow when using sudo command.