ok look im an newbie to linux and i only know what the installation guide is telling me ...but i am running Yellow Dog Linux 5.0 on my PS3 and i finished the install and rebooted when the kboot command came up i tabed until i found ydltext and i stated going through the process of setting up the account and what nought ....well it cam to the login part and i typed in "root" becasue i have been searching for an answer to this for a while and they said use that or something....and when i go down to type in a password it seems the keyboard doesnt respond or anything....it works in the username but not in password? im confused...help appreciated

It's working perfectly. On Windows and some others you've used to seeing asterisks (*) when typing a password, or bubbles or something. But when you log into a UNIX shell, or Linux, you type the username as you did, and when it asks for your password, nothing is printed on screen. It makes it more difficult (heh) to guess what you're typing. But despite the fact that you see nothing on screen, every keystroke goes trough; also remember that capitals are recognized, so a is different than A and so on. So just type the password carefully and press ENTER and you should be fine.

A short one: user root is a special user which exists on every UNIX/Linux system; root is the root user or superuser of the system, the one who has the highest privileges on the system (and has user ID number 0). You should not use root account unless you explicitly need to (even the regular maintenance work can be done using tools like sudo which allow you to temporarily use root privileges to do something, without actually separately logging in as root). Using root account means that if something goes wrong, you could be doing great damage, and if some program with a security hole is run as root, it's possible that the whole system is in danger. On Windows, for example, it has been until recently that every user was commonly given superuser rights; on Linux that is, and should not be, the case. Create a regular user account for yourself, and then use that user -- it's safer. Superuser is not needed to do the regular tasks and as I said, should only be used when absolutely necessary.