Root
The big concept that you have to understand when you are going to be using Linux is the concept of Root. In Linux, root pertains to the highest level of anything. When you hear about the root user, it is referring to the administrator of the computer. The root user is the highest level user that you can be on the computer.
So, if you can log in as root, you can do anything in the world you want to with the computer. Root can also mean the root of the operating system. It is where the operating system installed in the computer hard drive. If you think about this in terms of the Windows operating system, C:/ is the root of the Windows operating system because that is where it is installed.
Root can also mean the highest level that a user can get into. What does this mean? In Linux, users have home folders. The home folder holds all of the user’s data, such as documents, settings, programs, etc. So the root of the user would be their home directory. The home directory is the highest level for a particular user.
The main thing to understand whenever you are talking about root in Linux is that root is the highest level of anything. There’s actually a user account in Linux called root, and that user account is the absolute highest level user that you can begin the operating system in. Root can absolutely do anything. They have total access to everything in the operating system. Once we go into actually starting to type commands and making Linux do certain tasks, this concept of root is going to be crucial.
