For some operations that require elevated privileges, the user's password is sufficient instead of the root password

[fehlix]

What was the reason that sudo became the default for performing administrative tasks?

Something like this.
Some consideration where made about whether two passwords
for the user and root are really needed.
And it was considerd have this optional.
* to allow not the give root a password at all, during the installation.
* to have this option to set a root-password not enabled by default.
So in order to prefer user-password instead was made the default,
but user can still enabled the two-password setup and have root's
password the default authentication method for polkit-(GUI)-authentication.
sudo (CLI)-authentication would not be affected and would require user-password,
and user may need to remember both root and user-password.

[asqwerth]

https://mxlinux.org/blog/mx-21-wildflower-released/

THis has been the case since MX21.

I didn't ask by chance, because many things on MX Linux 21 required the root password, but on MX 23 the difference was noticeable, that the password of the current user was already enough for the same tasks.

Was your MX21 a clean install, or an in-place upgrade from MX19? If the latter, then the user vs root password thing would not have affected you.

[zoli62]

https://mxlinux.org/blog/mx-21-wildflower-released/

THis has been the case since MX21.

I didn't ask by chance, because many things on MX Linux 21 required the root password, but on MX 23 the difference was noticeable, that the password of the current user was already enough for the same tasks.

Was your MX21 a clean install, or an in-place upgrade from MX19? If the latter, then the user vs root password thing would not have affected you.

Coming from a Debian lineage, I've always preferred in-place upgrades.

[asqwerth]

Ah ha, that's why you didn't realize the default policy on using user and root pw had already changed in mx21.