I've commonly seen references to a wheel user group online as well as when setting up my sudoers file. Does naming a group wheel imply something special about the group or is it just a name for a generic group used in the same manner that foo and bar are thrown about?
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drs
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2See http://unix.stackexchange.com/q/1262/22565 I'd be tempted to vote it as a duplicate? – Stéphane Chazelas Aug 27 '14 at 14:26
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1Whoever considers this question a duplicate may have missed the point. The linked question is about the _name_. This question is more about its _role_. I thought the difference was obvious. – Manngo Feb 16 '22 at 01:56
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Rather than have to dole out individual permissions on a system, you can add users to the wheel group and they can gain access to administrator levels, simply by being in the wheel group. It's typically tied directly into sudo.
## Allows people in group wheel to run all commands
%wheel ALL=(ALL) ALL
Which means you can do anything on the system with sudo <cmd>.
Previously you needed to be in the wheel group if you wanted to have access to use certain commands, such as su.
excerpt - Wheel on Wikipedia
Modern Unix systems use user groups to control access privileges. The wheel group is a special user group used on some Unix systems to control access to the su command, which allows a user to masquerade as another user (usually the super user).
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38*The term was derived from the slang phrase big wheel, referring to a person with great power or influence.* [wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheel_(computing)) – fracz Nov 08 '19 at 07:50
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4Here's an alternative thought I had: On a ship, one can pass "The Wheel" to trusted subordinates to man the ship. It also has significance in terms of control but also added responsibility i.e. the steering wheel of car – robert Mar 25 '21 at 14:15
