The Origin of sudo

sudo is widely known as short for "superuser do", which runs a command as the superuser. The official site describes it as su "do": the su command, which switches users, with "do" attached.

Because su was originally read as superuser, "superuser do" is how most people read it. Today su is also explained as "substitute user," which runs a command as a different user. In fact, you can run commands as users other than root, like sudo -u alice cat file.txt. But since root privileges are the goal in most cases, the "superuser do" meaning stuck.

Born in 1980 at the State University of New York at Buffalo, this command remains one of the most essential tools in Linux server administration over 40 years later.