Doing Linux admin work with Emacs

[bebop52]

Hello,
I think it's very nice to use emacs as "operating system" on top of
linux (Ubuntu Lucid 10.0.4 in my case).  Especially dired is a
wonderful tool in my eyes.

When I start Gnu Emacs 23.1.1 with "myUser$ sudo emacs" (with myUser
having admin rights)  I can do everything I want, since Emacs acts as
root-user.  Which is very comfortable, but has a few negative side-
effects:

a) It means any new files/folders have owner and group 'root', but
should have owner 'myUser' and group 'myUsersGroup'.

b) Furthermore, many programs put some files or folders in the active
users home directory during installation. For example maven puts its
repo under  ~/.m2/repository/. My maven repository ended up under
root/.m2/repository/, because emacs acted as root user, so that was
the home directory.

c) Isn't it very dangerous to do websurfing with w3m after starting
emacs with "sudo emacs"? Any malware could potentially act as root
user, if there are security wholes in w3m or emacs. But when I do
admin work, I always have to google some stuff and end up in the web.

On the other hand, if I do "myUser$ emacs" (with myUser having admin
rights), without sudo, I can do admin work from the eshell using sudo
when necessary. But what about dired, for example? How can I give
emacs dired temporarily and in a controlled way admin rights (via
sudo) while running it as 'myUser' and not as 'root'?

I'm still looking for a decent workflow that enables me to open emacs
in the morning via xterm or gnome and stay in emacs all day, do the
admin/filesystem stuff as admin (but often via dired, if possible),
work as a standard user with sudo rights when writing or programming,
and surfing the web as a limited user without admin rights and with
little security risks. And being able to swich effortlessly between
the different roles.

Thanks for any help from wiser minds to a relative beginner in the
linux/emacs universe
t.