The wheel group on *nix computers typically refers to the group with some sort of root-like access. I've heard that on some *nixes it's the group of users with the right to run su , but on Linux that seems to be anyone (although you need the root password, naturally). On Linux distributions I've used it seems to be the group that by default has the right to use sudo ; there's an entry in sudoers for them:

%wheel ALL=(ALL) ALL