Ironically, "sudo su" works really well if you do need to get to root. But yeah, "sudo" is a much safer practice.
I also color code the hostname so that I can tell at a glance what machine I'm on.
For example,
export PS1='[\[\033[1;34m\]\u\[\033[0m\]@\[\033[1;30m\]\h\[\033[0m\] $newPWD]\$ '
On that same machine, the root prompt is identical except that the color is set to 1;31m instead of 1;34m, which makes it bright red.
Also -i does more stuff to simulate a login like setting $HOME and cd'ing there.
Usually you might want to use sudo -i or 'su -' which both simulate a login. But sudo su - really isn't needed any more since -i has been added
alias ssu='sudo /bin/bash -login'Years ago a friend of mine asked my help in securing a Unix system with sudo. I bascially told him it was nearly impossible because there were (and still are) too many ways to escape back to a root shell with sudo, so, in my humble opinion, gives a false sense of security.
If you need a longer session with uid 0, use sudo -i. Having a separate root login is pretty much pointless. I doubt having separate passwords helps security either, since local privilege escalation vulnerabilities are common anyway.
I've used sudo to restrict root access to specific command line invocations for certain users. With due care (ie. no access to software with shell escapes) it is secure.
In any case, distributions seem to be moving towards eliminating the superuser altogether in common use cases. I think advocating sudo was just the beginning.