The phone is set up by the manufacturer with what they think is a good, stable setup containing the software they think the phone should have. The operating system on the phone is Linux-based. In Linux, as a security measure, users are only granted certain rights to add, delete, modify, execute certain code/commands. The rest is done by the system with special permissions (super user or "root"). In desktop Linux, you can make yourself a super user and do whatever you like by assigning yourself the proper administrator account and using the "sudo" (super user do) command. However, in this cell phone, you can't just type sudo and run.
So, all of this hype is around finding a way to crack into the phone's OS and achieve a way to take total control over the locked parts of the phone using root. As a casual user, I would just advise you to take your phone and pretend like this isn't happening right now. Using root and not knowing what you're doing could expose you to security risks or potentially even brick your phone.