Unix-based operating systems, such as Linux, grant certain privileges depending on which user group you belong to. Such as creating directories, deleting directories, creating and modifying files, configuring specific parts of the system.

The root user has the maximum level of privileges and when he executes a program or command, it is executed with the privileges corresponding to his user. It is easy to guess that a bug or malware in these circumstances can have catastrophic results.

Normally the administrator/user will use an account with lower privileges, resorting to the SU command when needing to run a command as root.