On popular request, here’s the command that let you change the root password if you just simply don’t know it. Anyway I need to warn you, that the root user itself is not enabled by default, so it really does not have a password either.

I must cite it again: you do not need a standalone root user to work with Ubuntu!

The normal user account that you have - holds the right to do super user operations, so you’re the root yourself. All users, who belong to the admins group will automatically have right as well (check settings in the /etc/sudoers file).

The sudo way means that you just want to do a task, but not run a shell as root. This is a huge difference! So instead of saying su, or su - to get to a root shell, you can say only sudo whatever and you’ll be asked your normal user password only. That’s all

If you still keen on to have the normal root user on your box, type:

sudo passwd root

However I should say again, you don’t want the root user became active on your box. If you want a root shell, simply run: sudo -s to get one!

Using Ndiswrapper under Ubuntu is fun! Really easy to configure and install. My AP is in ASCII WEP code mode, so I just need the following commands to make it work: iwconfig wlan0 essid APNAME
iwconfig wlan0 key restricted s:THEPASSWORD

The *nix way. I love it.

Update: if you plug in the USB wifi device after the bootup procedure, it’ll not load the drivers. You must say ifup wlan0 to active it.

I badly needed Windows on my laptop, and had only some hours to install it, so I skipped the step to make it a dual-boot system.
As I returned to so called “normal operation” I wanted to use Ubuntu again. What to do? The Grub multiloader had been overwritten by Windows, so switching the Boot flag to the partition is not enough.
1) I found a nice image file at http://www.troubleshooters.com/linux/grub/grub.htm, downloaded and created a bootable CD with it.
2) When the Grub menu appeared, I pressed c for command-line options.
3) Typed: root (hd0,0)
setup (hd0)
4) Voila, Grub found the necessary vmlinuz file and the initrd (which was manually impossible for me) and after a reboot, I was able to log in to Ubuntu again.
5) I added the Windows partition to the Grub menu (/boot/grub/menu.lst)
title Microsoft Windows
root (hd0,1)
savedefault
makeactive
chainloader +1
6) don’t forget to change the ‘hiddenmenu’ item to ‘menu’, otherwise you’ll not see the boot menu, just after pressing Esc
7) and from now on the two operating systems live together, happily ever after.

sa-learn --D --force-expire equals -30% cpu usage… sweet