Use administrative privileges to edit a file.
Jim Campbell
jcampbell@gnome.org
Zander Brown
zbrown@gnome.org 2020

# Edit a file as the root user

Editing files as the root user is potentially dangerous, and may break your system in bad ways. Take great care when editing files as the root user.

To edit files as the root user, launch gedit from the terminal by entering:

sudo gedit

Using the sudo command, you will need to successfully enter your password before gedit will open.

As an alternative to the sudo command, you may obtain administrative privileges by entering:

su -

You would then launch gedit using the gedit command.

Once you have opened gedit with administrative privileges, gedit will keep those privileges until you close it.