In computing, the superuser is a special user account used for system administration. Depending on the operating system (OS), the actual name of this account might be root, administrator, admin or supervisor. On Linux, the user group administrator (adm) consists of non-root users who are allowed root privileges via the command sudo, and so is not the same as root in this instance.[1]
The principle of least privilege recommends that most users and applications run under an ordinary account to perform their work, as a superuser account is capable of unrestricted, potentially adverse, system-wide changes.
(In some cases, the actual name of the account is not the determining factor; on Unix-like systems, for example, the user with a user identifier (UID) of zero is the superuser, regardless of the name of that account;[2] and in systems which implement a role based security model, any user with the role of superuser (or its synonyms) can carry out all actions of the superuser account).