Originally posted here by Ouroboros

Also, I am having a hard time understanding the file permissions protocols in Linux...is there a good tutorial or website that I could check out to simplify things a bit? (I am the root user, after all...although the other users consist of my wife and daughter ...but hey...might as well know how to do everything, right?)
Do I understand correctly, you made user accounts for your wife and daughter and you use the root account? That's nog good idea at all.
You should only use the root account to do administration. For all other (normal) use you should use a normal account too. Do not graphical login with root, just do a su or su - at command line. If you login as root but forget that you are root you can easily damage your system a lot, or create easy holes for others while surfing or chatting... therefor all users including admins should have user accounts not as powerfull as root.