Terminals and superusers

We often give a solution as commands to type in a terminal. While it is usually possible to do the same with a distro’s graphical tools, the differences between these mean that such solutions are very specific. The terminal commands are more flexible and, most importantly, can be used with all distributions.

System configuration commands often have to be run as the superuser, often called root. There are two main ways of doing this depending on your distro. Many, especially Ubuntu and its derivatives, prefix the command with sudo , which asks for the user password and sets up root privileges for the duration of the command only. Other distros use su , which requires the root password and gives full root access until you type

logout. If your distro uses su , run this once and then run any given commands without the preceding sudo .