as my primary Desktop??, I know I can damage the system, but how exactly? Do some of you experts use root primarily, I bet you do.

No we don't - one wrong command, one runaway program and your files are gone.

.. and additionally accounts like "merlin" or "tux" are much more fun :-)

Besides damage to your own system, you can affect others on the network / internet. If you always use root, your computer can be used as a point of attack on others.

I'm no expert, but no, I never use root as a login... never, never, never. If I need to do something with root priviledges, I'll use su, issue the command, and exit from su.

I'm deathly afraid of developing scripts as root, especially if I want them to remove files. There's no telling what system files your script could kill while you're debugging it.

Besides that, if you're root and come across the rare linux virus, any command could get infected (ls, cp, mv, ps...) because any process you launch has write priviledges to those commands. Not using root access all the time is why linux is far less susceptible to viruses than Windows.

Here's a great reason not to use root - as a normal user, type this:

rm -rf /home/frontier1

but 'accidentally' put a small space between the first forward slash and 'home'. Now do this as root.

Actually don't do this as root. It will delete Linux, any mounted filesystems and your partition table. And all because you missed a space out.

On it's own, this fact is a good reason not to be root all the time.

Q*Bert

Whoa! I had no clue, thanks guys, changing over to my user account from now on, again thanks!

Yes, the famous "rm -rf /" command probably isn't the best to run as root

Also, I learned my lesson a while ago when I accidentally tried to rm -rf a folder that didn't exist and ended up deleting another folder altogether.

but why would you want to be called "root" it's a horrible username anyway....

I'm root sometimes. I use root to see how bad I can break my system, and then try to fix it, or recover it. Just for fun.

Not really I'm not that geeky... yet.

Cool

I did an "rm -fr /msdos" a few years back on my Linux box and wiped out my Windows 95 stuff (some might say that was a good thing), but it contained all of my expense records, etc and it was really maddening to try to recover it.

root is dangerous, since that experience I always sit on my hands first before I execute commands such as halting, rebooting, deleting, because you just never know....

I was new and fresh to linux about a year ago... I had no idea what I was doing. I completely taught myself everything I knew by trial and error. I always used root... and found out the hard way that it wasn't right. I ended up having to reinstall Mandrake 6 times completely before I stopped using root.

for me, I only have to su maybe 2 or 3 times a day anyway, my normal "work"load doesn't require me to be logged in as root. why run the risk when I'm not really gaining anything except maybe 20 seconds of typing ?

After reading this posting as a newbie I understand now why not to log on a root many thanx to all for this info

Just one question arises from this how do I export all of the setting that I have set up under Root to my User account.

Sorry if this seems a bit dumb but after working for far too long with Microsoft Bloatyware for so long I have become lazy in my ways
Its probably something so obvious that I missed it
Duhhh Microsoft made me stupid

substitute 'paul' for your username, and do it like so:

mv /root/.* /home/paul/ &&
chown -R paul.paul /home/paul/*

and that's it.

Also if you are working in a desktop environment, browsing the internet or chatting online root is dangerous. One time I tried to use X-Chat as root and it gave and error message saying something like "Running X-Chat as root is stupid....Don't do it!"

See if you get messed with while logged in as JoeSchmoe its tuff for an attacker to get anything done because JoeSchmoe doesn't have a lot of control over the system. If they get you as root...well you'll get rooted!