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You do not need to be root to run ROS nodes.

But to install ROS and its dependencies, you need privileged rights (the rights to run sudo apt install package-name). And to access some hardware interfaces like a serial port (/dev/ttyUSB0), your user needs to be in special group like dialout. To add your user to a new group, you also need superuser privileges.

So, to run ROS, you don't need root access but to install and configure your system, you do need to be root.