to a user (Myself), that way I would never have to log in as root, or does that defeat the purpose, and can it be dangerous?

It defeats the purpose, and is dangerous. You shouldn't need to log in as root anyway. There are tools that make sure you don't need to.

su allows you to become any user, but just typing 'su' will allow you to enter the root password.

sudo is much nicer (IMHO). It may not be installed, but you should be able to find it on your CDs. Just type 'sudo command' and enter your password, and the command will execute as root.

You really should never have to log in as root. If you need to perform a task that requires root privelages then you should do:

su

at a command prompt to become root. When your done exit out of the root account. You don't want to be going about your system everyday as root when you don't need to.

FEAR THE ROOT!!!!

Whoops. Somebody got to this thread before I was done typing. Sorry for duplicating the previous advice.

How tempting, how tempting isn't it to ride roughshod over linux's default security. Can it be done, sure (I'll show you one method shortly); should it be done? No.

I belong to a linux user group (Nashville Linux User Group ) and not too long ago, someone brought his laptop in. He had gotten frustrated with having to log into and out of the root account to get admin tasks done. So, he had the bright idea of setting every file and file system to read-write-execute for every user. Do not try this at home:

chmod -R 777 /*

Well, Redhat stopped dead at almost every turn. What he did not realize is that many linux programs will refuse to operate correctly if certain files or file systems have incorrectly set permissions. We wiped the HD and reloaded. It was that or have him track down every file and file system and set correct permissions. Redhat has over 1400 packages and thousands of files. A daunting task!

But there are other, more subtle dangers. Work hard to avoid running root with X windows. Why? Because people can send you, say, Open Office documents with embedded macros that you might be tempted to run willy-nilly, like

rm -rf /*

Do that and you will be re-loading linux if you are root. If you are yourself, however, you will only(!) lose those files for which you have permissions. Bad enough, but not a disaster.

These are just two good reasons to avoid doing what your are after. Learn about the keyboard shortcuts ctrl-alt-F1 (to F6) and ctrl-alt-F7 (to F12). These are your friends.

There are, of course, time when you must run as root in Xwindows. If you must, you must. But the less you do it the safe you are from yourself and from others.

Cheers--
Charles