When you remove the 'run as root' part of the config file by the way, the hampster filer opens if executed from the root account, but it doesn't load the UI elements correctly. Still works fine though for browsing (segmentation fault upon trying to open Settings in that state, though).

Well, most desktop Linux distros actively discourage running file managers as root, precisely because you might easily destroy something (whether by delete or by move) and make the system un-bootable.

The logic for locking down the root account with no password by default, is that a hacker can no longer rely on the fact that there will always be an account with the username "root" that the machine can be logged in as, making exploits that still require logging in harder. Or something like that.