You ALWAYS put in a root password. Even on systems Im just playing
around on I put one on.

In your situation, when you put in your username, have you tried
clicking the tab button to move it to the password box and then clicking
go?

The reason for this is, whether or not there is a password you might
(and I say might because I do not know) have to activate the field anyway.

I was not thinking clearly. I responded before I thought
about my wording. I inadvertently thought you mean your "account" even
though I wrote root.

What I meant to say is that you always put a password on your account.
For root, creating an account is just asking for trouble.

Why is that?

One can get into the same "trouble" by doing a "sudo bash" and
running as root.

One thing I find troublesome with most Linux distros is the fact
one can shutdown the system as a user using a desktop GUI. As a
for-example of one system that controls shutdown properly, look
at Solaris -- one must be logged-in as root to perform a shutdown.

And here's something funny from about a decade ago: there was an
HP-UX desktop system at a client's site I was using and that system
had a power button on the front panel, lower-right corner, at the
desktop height. When using the mouse, the semi-stiff mouse cord
would hit the power button and shutdown.

I had to create a root p/w with D.Hagar's fix, because the compiler
won't use my login p/w when I'm using install commands...Thx for the
warning...

I've been using 8.04 since it's official release and never created a root
account or password. The way it works is that the original user becomes the
root user by typing "sudo bash" in a terminal. The system prompts for a
password, which is the user's ordinary password, and that grants full root
privileges until that shell is exited.

Ubuntu uses your login password as the root password.

I had to create root p/w with D.Hagar's fix because compiler would not
accept my login p/w with apt install commands...

That is not the case. There is no user configured root password in Ubuntu by
default.

You cannot log in as root by default either.

To set the password type...

sudo passwd

I think I have a login p/w and a sudo root p/w now... been
attempting to compile the Linux Viewer for Second Life, lol at myself
for squinting alot, but learning so much it's gotten interesting!