Following another thread, I installed the thought-to-be-safe z4root from andapps and now I am stuck in the four-dot coma cycle spoken of in
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...d.php?t=137965 
-- and that was just from running the root app, I didn't even get the fun of messing up system files through my own clumsiness
... so I'd have to say, overall, unless you need an expensive brick, or are at least prepared to own one, stay away from the root.
which is sad, really, considering this is supposed to be
open source; I only wanted root so I could add android.l.google.com into the /etc/hosts file as a possible easy and seemingly harmless fix to get gmail to register on ermine-PE. Up to that point, it was a great little device with just that one annoying google-login glitch.