Managing users
In this context, a user is anyone using a computer or a system resource. In its simplest form, a Linux user or user account is identified by a name and a unique identifier, known as a UID.
From a purely technical point of view, in Linux we have the following types of users:
- Normal (or regular) users—General-purpose, everyday user accounts, mostly suited for personal use and for common application and file management tasks, with limited access to system-wide resources. A regular user account usually has a login shell and a home directory.
- System users—These are similar to regular user accounts, except they may lack a login shell or a home directory. System accounts are usually assigned to background application services, mostly for security reasons and to limit the attack surface associated with the related resources—for example, a web server daemon handling public requests should run as a system account, ideally without login or
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