Error message.

tommylight wrote:

Next time you install Debian, when it asks for root password, just press enter and leave it blank.

I did say for ROOT no password, normal users must have a user name and password.

On Debian, having a root user and a normal user puts it in multi-user mode, so anything regarding administration requires logging in as both users, that can cause issues with permisions that will have to be manually added later for the normal user.
When there is no root user, that is a single user mode and any addministration is done with temporary escalated priviledges as a normal user ( see SUDO), so the permissions are set right away with no need for further work. This also is a safety feature as the system will not allow anything to run with administrative priviledges without explicit permission from the user.

Just a bit of clarification:

The latest 2.8.2 ISO installs Network Manager rather than WICD.

If you have an entry in /etc/network/interfaces, as described in the hm2_eth docs, then Network Manager says that the connection is "unmanaged" and ignores it.
(Which is fine, it should still work for the mesa card)