i logged in as root with no password. i'd like to put in a pw for root and then create a personal account. will this break anything, and how should i do it?
Well, I've tried this on RC5 (I'm about to reflash with RC8, so I'll retry all the steps and maybe I'll be intelligent enough to write them down for future reference) and you can use a normal user, BUT:
1) Several applets (like the one who change the network configuration, for example) won't be useable by a normal user (they write to files owned by root and not world writeable).
Of course you can use "su" and then launch the application from an aterm prompt... but remember that in this case some options will be saved in /home/root/Choices instead of /home/<your_user>/Choices.
For some commands you could use setuid (maybe with the help of a "wheel" group into which your user belongs and world execution removed), but this won't work with cardctl (needs recompile to allow normal user some operations) and some applet (I remember some message complaining about the need of a package to do setuid stuff).
2) You have to fix some permissions in /dev/misc, like the touchscreen (with the same "wheel" group as above, maybe), something in /dev/sound and somewhere else (sorry, I can't remember).
3) Copy stuff from /home/root to /home/<your_user> and change to the right permissions.
Hope this can help, I'll add more stuff if needed...
Maybe RC8 already addressed much of this stuff already (in this case, ignore this post...).
Ciao,
Andrea