What\'s so bad about being root on a single user system?

[zaphod]

I don\'t know what most people use their Z\'s for, but I\'m its only user and I\'m constantly fiddling with it--installing packages, testing unstable apps, editing things in /etc and so on-- so logging in as an ordinary user and having to su/sudo all the time just adds hassle.

Why have users and groups at all on a system which only has one user?  It seems to me like needless complexity.  Is there some compelling reason not to be root? (Aside from reducing the chances of an accidental \'rm -rf /\'?)  I have had much better results with zaurus ROMs which default to root; particularly with games and older apps from the 2.X Sharp ROMs.   But I keep reading chatter in this forum about having non-root users preconfigured on upcoming pdaxrom versions...

[zxerx]

It depends on which side of the fence you sit. If you\'re used to a single user environment (ie: PC/Mac), then your agument stands. If you\'re used to multi-user systems, then running a multi-user OS in single user mode as root is a heinous crime.

Even though I trust myself (despite the fact I once wiped out a 1000+ user /home with rm -rf ../*), I really hate doing normal user tasks as root, and there\'s quite a bit of software doesn\'t like running as root either. There\'s a long established, proper way to do things - making life easy by running as root is a cop out - but I guess these days, on a personal single user system, it doesn\'t really matter.

<rant>there was a time, pre-linux, that having root access was akin to being a god</rant>

[cycojesus]

just try rm -fr /
first as a simple user
then as root

You\'ll soon know why root is not who you want to be all the time

\"There is two type of unix users : those who made a mistake as root, those who will\"

[zenyatta]

Even though you are the only user of your Z, you run other people\'s code. That code may wreak as much havoc as yourself (whether through error or malice). Running the code as non-root limits possible damage.

z.

[omin0us]

also something you might not have considered is the fact that there is defaultly no password on the root account. So what do you do if you are sitting in a coffe shop or something with a WiFi hotspot, and someone also there decides to try to ssh into your zaurus with root. omg...no password. the remote user could then easily wreck havok from that point. Not likely but it is still a concern.