So you’ve just installed Ubuntu 26.04 LTS. Nice. When you first set the machine up—whether it’s a local install or a fresh cloud instance—Ubuntu hands you a single default user and sends you on your way.
For a personal machine, one account is all you need. But the moment someone else needs access, you’re building a restricted dev environment, or you simply don’t want one stray script having the run of the whole system—that’s when separate user accounts earn their keep.
Here’s how to add one without breaking anything.
What You Need First
Make sure your account has sudo (or root) privileges. Without it, you can’t create users at all—so confirm you’re an admin before you start.
The Easy Way: adduser
This takes about thirty seconds.
1. Open a terminal and run:
Let’s say we’re adding a user named Bob:
sudo adduser bob
2. Enter your password
Since the command runs under sudo, the terminal first asks for your password to confirm it’s really you.
3. Set a password for the new user
Type a password for Bob, press Enter, then type it again to confirm. Don’t worry that nothing shows up as you type—Linux hides passwords on purpose.
4. Skip through the questions
Next, Ubuntu asks for some extra details: full name, room number, work phone, home phone, and “other.” Almost nobody fills these in. Just press Enter through all of them.
5. Confirm
When it asks “Is the information correct?”, type Y and hit Enter.
6. Verify it worked
Bob should now exist on the system. You can confirm by checking /etc/passwd:
cat /etc/passwd | grep bob
If you see a line starting with bob:x:..., you’re done.
What’s Actually Happening
adduser is a friendly wrapper that does the heavy lifting behind the scenes. When you run it, Ubuntu automatically:
- Creates the new user
- Creates a matching group with the same name
- Assigns a UID and GID following standard Debian conventions
- Creates the home directory (
/home/bob) and copies the default template files from/etc/skel - Sets up the login password
- Runs any custom scripts you’ve configured
Skipping the Prompts Entirely
If you’re scripting this, or you just can’t be bothered answering a bunch of questions, you can create the account non-interactively with one line:
sudo adduser --disabled-password --gecos "" bob
The Low-Level Alternative: useradd
You may have also seen useradd mentioned. Yes, the names are confusingly similar—welcome to Linux.
useradd is the bare-bones, low-level tool. It doesn’t walk you through anything; you have to specify everything yourself:
sudo useradd -s <SHELL> -m -d <HomeDir> -g <Group> UserName
Here’s what each flag does:
-s: the default login shell (e.g.,/bin/bash)-d: the home directory path-m: creates the home directory if it doesn’t already exist-g: the primary group
One thing to watch: useradd never asks you to set a password, so the account stays locked until you do it manually:
sudo passwd bob
And here’s a mistake genuinely worth avoiding: don’t forget the username at the end of that command. Running sudo passwd on its own changes the root password, which is a much bigger deal than you probably intended.
A Few Extra Things Worth Knowing
adduser can do more than create regular logins. You can also use it to:
- Add a standard user
- Create a system user (
--system) - Create a user group (
--group) - Create a system group (
--system --group) - Add an existing user to an existing group
For the full details, check the manual:
man adduser
There’s also a config file at /etc/adduser.conf that controls system-wide behavior—things like default home directory paths, UID ranges, and skeleton directories. To read up on that:
man adduser.conf