Just now got Mandrake linux 10.0....i am slowly figuring this thing out, I have never used linux before, but I dont know how to log on as root, can someone please tell me how? Thanks

also, can you make it so that your main user name has root abilities? I have gotten the error that I dont have permissions to do several things, its a bit annoying, Thanks for the help anyone.

If you use the Mandrake Control Centre you can install the gdm package and then choose that as your display manager. That will allow you to login as root. It's a bad idea to log in as root unless you really need to. As you've found out, there are strict limits to what a normal user can do and once you've got your system sorted out that's a good thing. It's too easy to screw things up when you have the power to do anything so check your brain is engaged before you become root. To just do simple things it's easy to become root in the terminal with
su
password
To edit a text file use
gedit /path/to/file
or
kate /path/to/file

to log in as root open the console
type su
and then the password

Start tab on Task Bar > System Tools > Terminal - enter "su -". The prompt will change from a $ to a # sign. You will have to enter the Admin password but it will not show what you type will doing so.

I'd like to reiterate something: not only is it a bad idea to always use root, it's A TERRIBLE one too. Say, you wanted to delete everything on your floppy in root by typing "rm -rf /mnt/floppy" but you accidently press enter when you type the "rm -rf /" part. Kiss your system goodbye, because the essential files are already deleted. I recomment doing this command

this will acsk you permission when deleted files.

In addition to su, you could type
su -c "command"
that will do one command after your password and then go back to the normal account

There is also "sudo" but I never bothered to learn it.