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Virtual Private Server
 (
VPS
) providers unlock the 
root
 password and actually have you log in as the 
root
 user. 
Having an unlocked 
root
 account is not a standard Ubuntu 
practice, and is a customization specific to some cloud providers. 

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Managing Users and Permissions
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The shell will ask for that user's password and then you'll be logged in as that user. 
Again, type 
exit
 when you're done using the account, which will return you to the 
one you were using before you switched.
That command is all well and good if you know the user's password, but you often 
won't. Typically, in an enterprise, you'll create an account, force the user to change 
their password at first login, and then you will no longer know that user's password. 
Since you have 
root
 and 
sudo
 access, you could always change their password and 
then log in as them. But they'll know something is amiss if their password suddenly 
stops working—you're not eavesdropping, are you? Armed with 
sudo
 access, 
you can use 
sudo
 to change to any user you want to, even if you don't know their 
password. Just prefix our previous command with 
sudo
 and you'll only need to enter 
the password for your user account, instead of theirs:
sudo su -
Switching to another user account is often very helpful for support (especially 
while troubleshooting permissions). As an example, say that a user comes to you 
complaining that he or she cannot access the contents of a specific directory, or they 
are unable to run a command. In that case, you can log in to the server, switch to 
their user account, and try to reproduce their problem. That way, you can not only 
see their problem yourself, but you can also test out whether or not your fix has 
solved their issue before you report back to them.
Now we have a full understanding of user accounts, and even how to switch 
between them. In the next section, we'll look into groups, which allow us to 
categorize our users.