Rooting my Eris

[Droid hungry]

Ok so, everyone on here (well a large amount of people that are in the forums and whatsnot around the website) have their phones rooted. Now I seem to be under the impression that it is amazing. I don't really understand all the lingo and reasons behind rooting so I would really appreciate anyone who is willing to help me out. Things like flashing and side loading and roms and kernels (I kinda understand those last two but not much). I would also like to know the advantages of rooting against like my phone stock running 2.1 with HTC Sense. If it is really worth it I am thinking about rooting. I know this probably makes me sound like a noob but I want to learn and you got to start some how.
Thanks for any help.

 

[doogald]

A quick answer: the people who develop replacement ROMs for the Eris work continuously to try to fix any problems that HTC and Verizon seem unwilling to deal with. Because the phone has root user authority, you can remove pre-loaded apps, such as Peep, Footprints, Stocks, Teeter or the Amazon MP3 store that you cannot remove from the stock OS. Settings can be changed to run the phone's CPU faster when the phone is active and the screen is on and slower (and at a lower voltage, saving battery capacity) when the phone is inactive and the display is turned off. Root user rights gives you the ability to better backup and restore applications and settings from your phone in case you wish to start fresh or are forced, for some reason, to do a factory reset. Finally, rooting your phone gives you the ability to try alternate builds, such as a ROM based on stock Android running version 2.2 without any of the HTC customizations.

This is a great Q&A about rooting: Rooting Q&A - Android Forums

And I think that, though there may be an easier way to root your phone, this explains the process, as well as the process of installing a replacement ROM, better than any I have seen: Universal Eris Root for Dummies! - Android Forums

Finally, I think a good first ROM for a new rooter is one called xtrSENSE 4.6.5, which you can download and read more about from here: [ROM][GPL][11/5/2010] xtrSENSE4.6.5 [cache2cache,apps2sd,oc,jit]-HTC Sense - xda-developers