Originally Posted by Yhor
I keep seeing this "sudo" popping up in everything I read, just what is it?
My guess... it's a pseudo (alternate) method of doing something, such as admin on your computer or fixing files?
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Basically, in order to perform certain actions, that action must be run as root. Root is an unrestricted user, which can do anything they want on the system and nothing will get in the way. Many distributions no longer (by default) allow the root user to log in, instead giving users a method to
temporarily gain root privileges for the duration of the single command. Hence sudo. So, say I wanted to do something silly like write over my disk with zeroes. The old way:
1. Log in as root (or use su)
2. run: cat /dev/zero > /dev/sda0
now
1. run: sudo cat /dev/zero > /dev/sda0
Sudo will prompt you to re-enter your password.
There are serveral advantages of this method, especially if multiple people use the machine. For more information read
this
Note: For many at this point it is possible to completely manage the machine using the GUIs, so you may never need sudo unless you are doing something complex.