Depending on the operating system (OS), the actual name of this account might be root, administrator, admin or supervisor.
In Unix-like computer OSes (such as Linux), root is the conventional name of the user who has all rights or permissions (to all files and programs) in all modes (single- or multi-user).
Doing so is sometimes called dropping root privileges and is often done as a security measure to limit the damage from possible contamination of the process.
It is often recommended that root is never used as a normal user account,[6][7] since simple typographical errors in entering commands can cause major damage to the system.
The su approach requires the user to know the root password, while the sudo method requires that the user be set up with the power to run "as root" within the /etc/sudoers file, typically indirectly by being made a member of the wheel,[8] adm,[9] admin, or sudo group.
For a number of reasons, the sudo approach is now generally preferred – for example it leaves an audit trail of who has used the command and what administrative operations they performed.
[10] Some OSes, such as macOS and some Linux distributions (most notably Ubuntu[6]), automatically give the initial user created the ability to run as root via sudo – but this is configured to ask them for their password before doing administrative actions.
[6] In mobile platform-oriented OSs such as Apple iOS and Android, superuser access is inaccessible by design, but generally the security system can be exploited in order to obtain it.
In Windows XP (and earlier systems) administrator accounts, authentication is not required to run a process with elevated privileges.