Dunno myself. Do you mind filing a specific enhancement request at http://bugs.maemo.org so you get hopefully there the answers from the guys in the know?

Thanks!

I think it would be better to make sudo work like in Ubuntu.

However... since it doesn't, here's what I do:

Currently, I just drop a small file ("gainroot.sudoers") into /etc/sudoers.d/ with the following line:
Then I issue "update-sudoers".

Of course, this has to be done as root The first time, I just
Once this file is in place, you just add "sudo" in front of your root command, or "sudo su -" gives you a root prompt.

Or you could install sudser from extras which does the same

As pointed out there are lots of workarounds for this problem (I usually just end up ssh'ing to 127.0.0.1 to comment out the R&D if statement from gainroot), but the point is that it shouldn't be necessary; after all root access has many important uses and shouldn't require an external application to enable. It's a tiny thing to fix from the maemo side of things, but would certainly remove a lot of headaches. I've opened a feature request in bugzilla, so please don't pass on voting it up:
https://bugs.maemo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=4008

Voted!

As I said before, I like how Ubuntu does it. I'd like to see a setup screen asking for the user's login name and password, and then you can use your user password when issuing root commands with "sudo".

Maemo is definitely past the point where it should be using a generic "user" for the user name.