I have been having to log in as root to do anything, and this is what my terminal says:

I don't really know what the problem is. Any ideas?

man sudo?
Maybe this should help.

I don't know if Debian has this (it probably does), but if you type 'visudo' at the command line, the sudoers file will be opened in vi, in that file there will probably be a commented (or not) bit which talks about users in the 'wheel' group having superuser privileges. Just uncomment it, or if it is already uncommented, do nothing, and as root, add your user to the 'wheel' group.

While there is some information on the manpage of sudo, you will find much more by accessing the manpage for the sudoers file:

drax946@eirulan:~$ man sudoers

Also to edit the /etc/sudoers file, it may be best to use "visudo" which does syntax checking and such before it saves the file.

drax946@eirulan:~$ man visudo

The grammar in the /etc/sudoers file looks as if it could be quite complex, from limiting users to only being able to run certain commands as certain users to allowing a user to open a root terminal with no password.

In general I make use of "su" with password authentication or the Root Terminal from the Gnome menus. I believe both are setup in the default workstation setup.

Hope this helps get you headed in the right direction for what you are wanting to do.