[TriLUG] root

[Alan Porter]

The other day, I was explaining to my daughter that the administrative 
user or "super user" on a Linux system is usually named "root" [1].

She asked me why.

A little bit of googling turned up a lot of "super user is called root" 
statements, but very few "why" statements.  Some guessed that it was 
because root was the only user who had permission to write to the root 
directory in the filesystem.

Does anyone in this group have any further insights into the term "root"?


[1] Because after hearing that I had purchased an MSP430 "Chronos" watch 
development kit, Nivex made the smart-aleck response:
$ ssh root at alanswatch

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