Getting started with Debian (again!)

I finally have hardware with a "normal" mother board, and have 
successfully installed Debian Woody on it (Micronpc 400 MHz Pentium II). 
The last time I tried this (Aug. 2002) was on my AMD K-6 with a 
non-standard mother board. I was unable to resolve a number of issues 
related to simple interaction with the machine running X. Those problems 
don't exist on my current installation, so I can get on with "real" stuff.

There do seem to be some changes since 2002. I seem to remember being 
able to do more things from the Gnome log-in screen. In this current 
setup, I can only log in as a normal user. In the past, I could log in 
as root, or I could shut down the system. I assume that these are deemed 
to be security issues, and the "as shipped" configuration is set this 
way. I'd like to look up this in "the manual" and make some changes, but 
I don't know what to call it, or which manual to look in. I assume there 
is a config file somewhere that I can change. Recommendations?


-- 
Regards,

Dick Steffens
http://home.comcast.net/~rsteff/