OSNews

Depends on the use of that desktop, really.

If it's a personal computer with only one user set up and one person ever using it, then sure, there's not much of a difference with root access or not. Whatever infects it has access to everything on that user account. Similarly, multiple people using one account can be just as bad--if not worse, because one person could get the infection and everyone suffers, and it only takes one person to start it all. And there's far more people who have no clue what they're doing than there are people who know computer security basics.

If it's a family computer with multiple user accounts set up and decent security, if one user's account gets infected all of the other users are generally safe, at least from the effects of a spreading infection. Depending on how groups are set up, reading other users' data can be possible, but Debian for example sets up each user with their own group to prevent this kind of thing. If it gains root though, not only is that a sure-fire way for it to be able to spread and infect other users' accounts, it has no restrictions on file access whatsoever.

So root access, IMO, *can* be much worse. It just depends on the situation and how the machine is set up.