The root account's home directory may be determined by developer or local preference, but this is the recommended default location. [16]
[16] If the home directory of the root account is not
stored on the root partition it will be necessary to make certain it
will default to /
if it cannot be
located.
We recommend against using the root account for tasks that can be performed as an unprivileged user, and that it be used solely for system administration. For this reason, we recommend that subdirectories for mail and other applications not appear in the root account's home directory, and that mail for administration roles such as root, postmaster, and webmaster be forwarded to an appropriate user.