Marcel Gagné

I'm not sure what distribution is distributed with the book but generally speaking during the install process of Linux you will be prompted to make up a password for root (the administrator account) and then usually to set up at least one other regular user with a password if its own.

If you're using a non-root account (which you should be!) i.e. a regular user, then you can open a Terminal window and type "su" or "su -" to switch user to root, you need the password though.

Can you remember making a password? I don't think the password for root can be blank, I'm not sure.

I know in Ubuntu instead of having root and user accounts that distro uses the "sudo" command in front of commands that a regular user doesn't have permission to use. Weird.

Maybe you are root and you didn't set up another user account? What you see if you Log Off?