Thanks rajibando. I may have fixed the persistent problem on my own. I read somewhere about installing to flash disk and being able to select a persistent space but couldn't figure out how to do that. Then I saw "install to flash"' on my desktop so I installed to another flashdrive and was able to select a space of 6419 mb on a 16 Gig drive installing the DVD iso. It booted up OK but I haven't re=booted yet to see if it worked. As for being the root I still have reading to do. I'll look for your posts, also. Any suggestions on tutorial posts would be helpful. Sorry for the bloated writing as I can get scatterbrained when trying to describe my attempts and try to provide as much info as possible. Thanks to all who replied again.