> Thank you for replying.
> I'm the only person using my laptop, so shouldn't I be logged in as root?

so beware of answers like "no you shouldn't it's bad".

that's just stupid answers. it isn't bad, but it's just not using big
adventages of unix system.

using normal account for normal work and root account only when root
privileges are needed has lots of adventages:

1) you WON'T accidentally damage your system, except your private files in
your home directory.

that's main adventage

2) if unix viruses would exist, they won't work, because they can't infect
programs except programs in your home directory, which doesn't contain
lot of them (if any).

3) you may create more than one account, you may do your work on one
account and test programs you are not sure of on other account, so
accidental destruction of your valuable data is impossible.


there are other adventages similar to this 3.

and you MAY work as root and it will work without any problems.
but you will just have DOS/windoze like environment without any protection
at all.

there are cases no protection is needed - like most of my routers where
only root account exist.

in normal workstations it's better to use non-root account.

using user instead of root saved my system 2 times when i made a typo
using rm -rf :)