It's really hard, because the author is not only against limited user accounts, he is also against ISO files.
The one critical thing with running as root in my mind is clobbering some storage in /dev.
Elsewhere in this thread the benefits are described , and im really curious if Linux could get a proper SAS/SAK working (your root password would only ever be entered into your trusted system login UI)
Got any links to docs on how Android works in this respect, please?