Su vs. Sudo The su command switches to the super user – or root user – when you execute it with no additional options. You’ll have to enter the root account’s password. This isn’t all the su command does, though – you can use it to switch to any user account. If you execute the su bob command, you’ll be prompted to enter Bob’s password and the shell will switch to Bob’s user account. Once you’re done running commands in the root shell, you should type exit to leave the root shell and go back to limited-privileges mode. Sudo runs a single command with root privileges. When you execute sudo command , the system prompts you for your current user account’s password before running command as the root user. By default, Ubuntu remembers the password for fifteen minutes and won’t ask for a password again until the fifteen minutes are up. This is a key difference between su and sudo. Su switches you to the root user account and requires the root acc...