To the Linux helpful community:

I am a new Linux user, and have successfully installed Fedora on my laptop. I created a user because I hear you are not supposed to use Linux root for reading mail, playing videos, etc because it could "mess" up your system. Is this true? ;therefore, I just created a user name for me.

However, I would like to know how to give myself full access to the system.

For instance, I cannot access some important folders and files; and sometimes it does not prompt me for the root password.

I added myself to the group root, but that has not given me full access. Do I need to add myself to all Linux groups on the system?

Thank you for your help. I greatly appreciate it.

One (of many) reasons why there are so many Windows zombies-spamrelays on the net is the regular user has full access to the system. You should give your user access only to files and devices you need in everyday life and leave system protected.

There's no point in being careful and not logging in as root only to give a user full access rights and log in as them....that's exactly the same as logging in as root!! You shouldn't need access to the whole system anyway: a normal user can still run programs and you should be saving any work you do to your home directory. If you need to run a program as root (say to do a quick system admin job) then use 'su'.

All right, I agree.

But why can I not run these in the terminal:

I first pop open a terminal, then type su. I enter password. However if I type fdisk, it does not recongize the command or mkfs.ext3. Why is this, and can this be corrected?

Use "su -" the extra "-" tells su to load the environment of the user you're changing to.

Thank you.

One more question, though. How can I hibernate my computer on my laptop in Fedora Core Three? I type suspend -f and suspend from the terminal and nothing happens? Ideas?