I can't access root, change my screen resolution, compile (I can open config and everything, but make won't do anything), and as such am having a very unpleasant experience with this distro. Any suggestions?

can't access root: i'm assuming you mean using the su command:

Logon as root (at the logon screen), then do the following:

usermod -g wheel <your user name>

logon as <your user name> and it should be sweet.

Can't change screen resolution: two things that need to be done:
modify your x configuration file commonly /etc/X11/xorg.conf
Find a guide to do this via google, or here.

Once that is done you can use krandrtray to change the res in KDE.

Can't compile - what error do you get? bash: make: command not found would imply make is not installed OR at least not in the path.

After that ... yeah it depends on the error.

As for unpleasant experience - well it seems a very fashionable but i haven't seen it ...

Good luck

This is a pretty good Ubuntu guide: http://ubuntuguide.org/

How did you install kubuntu?
If you installed normally, you should have had a chance to set the root password during installation. If it is the livecd, you can precede any console command with "sudo" to run as root or you can type "su" to switch to root (within that console session)-- the root password is probably "root".
Most of those problems seem to be stemming from the fact that you don't have root access.

The root account is disabled by default. To enable it use the command "sudo passwd root" and a password for this account. This will allow you to login as root using the 'su' command.
As for compiling you will need to installing the gcc compiler from Synaptic.