You want my honest answer? Do not do it. If you are not absolutely comfortable doing it then you are not ready. Although UnrEVOked has made the risks small, there are some. First off, read as much as you can. Even stuff about Linux root accounts and root privileges is germane and could help you understand if you want to do it. It is absolutely worth it in my opinion, but you have to be comfortable with what is going on, and the way to do that is to understand it at least on a rudimentary level. IMHO, of course.
-Nkk
EDIT: This comes from a computer nerd that loves tinkering and playing and hacking (the real kind, not the cracking kind). My core belief on technological issues is that if there are risks associated an action, anyone that does not know what is going on has no place doing that action. I have seen people brick phones, I even saw a friend who is a musician lose a laptop because they changed a couple of files in the System32 file in Windows. Heck, even I lost a linux machine be playing with kernel (I did this to learn, so it was a bit different but still works as an example). They had no idea what they are doing, and suffered from the risks that they did not know how to avoid or even fix.
