[ILUG] New to Xubuntu 7.04

[new_xubuntu at eircom.net]

Hi Guys

I recently installed Xubuntu 7.04 onto my Toshiba Satellite laptop. 
Partitioning & installation went grand, no problems. I have a few 
questions I would like to ask about Linux:

- During installation I made a user with password as required. Is this 
user root?

- When I go into User Settings/Properties I see an entry for root and 
for my user. But the password for root has eight digits whilst the 
password I gave had seven. Can anyone explain this please?

- I tried Red Hat 5 a couple of years ago and then you were free to 
become root and run commands, but I have read that Xubuntu restricts 
this, and everything must be run using "sudo". Is this correct?

- Has anyone set up the Eircom wireless router in Xubuntu. Can you tell 
me what is needed or how to do this?

- My linux partition can recognise the WinXP partition I have on my 
computer, but in XP I cannot see the Linux one. Is this normal, and are 
they still truly separate partitions?

- Lastly, when I write data to a CD or USB removable drive, is it 
written in a particular file format (e.g. NTFS, ext3, etc), or is it 
just written as HTML, PDF, etc files, with no file format? Is this then 
a handy way of transferring files from my XP to my Xubuntu partition.

Many thanks for your help

Dermot