[AC Question]

Got one from a friend recently and want to try rooting it. Bootloader is already unlocked since its a Developer Edition, so I figure there should be a pretty simple way to do it.

Just root for now, I might look into a custom ROM later.

Thanks so much!

[Rukbat]

1) If you flash a custom ROM, rooting now is like washing your hands before they get dirty. You root the ROM, so you're rooting a ROM you're going to get rid of. Waste of effort.

2) How you root a ROM depends on the ROM - basically the version of Android. Some versions (like 4.4.2 with a kernel earlier than June 3, 2014) are trivial - Towel Root does it. Some, like 5.1, are probably not rootable yet. To root a ROM you have to get temporary root - that's the "exploit" you read about. Someone has to find an exploit for that particular ROM first. (It took almost a year for 4.4.2.) Rooting itself is trivial - copy a file named su (what's usually referred to as the superuser binary) to /system/bin or /system/xbin. But you can't do that unless you're rooted (or building Android from the source.).