I hear that a favorite anti-Linspire criticism is that it negates Linux security standards, and/or promotes irresponsibility, by allowing the user to do everything as root, and by default. Well, this is an issue where I oppose the *apparent* majority of users--non-Linspire Linux users, that is. If user freedom is to be kept at a maximum, users should be able to take the risk of working as root without the installation program discouraging it. If they are willing to accept the increased risk, more power to them.

Any distro that I've met allows you to do this. As dumb as it really is.

Yes, but Linspire allegedly allows it more easily, or something that singles it out for criticism.

If its singled out, its probably because it is default behavior.
Slackware, Gentoo, and others will let you, but they make you go through extra work to set it up that way.

I think GDM by defaults prohibits Root to login from withing the GUI (so root has to login into a console and type startx to get into Gnome or KDE) but this can be disabled in the configuration.

All other distro's I know "force" you to give a root password and make 1 user account, but if you decide not to use it and to keep using the root account most of them will just work.

The difference is that Linspire "advices" you create a user account but it doesn't "force" you when you install it.

I have recently re-installed Linspire 5.0 (due to a recent upgrade) onto our family desktop, and can confirm that Linspire, as part of the installation routine does force you to set up a root account WITH a password. Once it is installed it then goes though a configuration routine setting up sound cards, User accounts (also with passwords, you can log in without a password if you wish but it warns you against it) and other basic configuration. It also sets up by default a very robust firewall without even needing to do anything.
It is the easiest (and prettiest)installation I have ever done, and I have done many OS installations. The OS really is a no-brainer, ideal for my wife and kids. They can happily use this after I have spent no more than half an hour setting it up, leaving me to go back to more interesting things on my server (debian) and laptops (slackware and vetorlinux).
Ubuntu/ Kubuntu allows everyone to be SU, and there appears to have been a quite puzzling reaction to that too, surely it is down to the individual?
It really is a risk/ convenience argument and to be honest the convenience for the family (and therefore me) is worth the quite negligible risk.

This has been pretty well discussed to death in this very forum, you know. Closing as we don't need more than one of these.