Hey Mark,
"root" is the initial administrator user when installing MySQL. Also, on Linux type system it's the default super user/adminstrator (super user role on Solaris). You need root for the MySQL login unless you have other users defined which are allowed to connect from the host you are doing the connection from.
SSH is used to manage your MySQL server instance (e.g. startup/shutdown the service or edit the configuration file) as well as getting some system stats (mem and CPU usage). "Use sudo" is, at least on Win based systems, relatively useless as one always must be admin to start/stop the service.
If you only want to use the SQL IDE you don't need the server instance. The connection (to the MySQL server) itself is enough. Also this connection can use SSH (as a tunnel this time) to circumvent port restriction (e.g. 3306, the MySQL default port) is blocked by a firewall, but 80, the http port, is open). An SSH tunnel allows to use another open port to connect to MySQL indirectly.
HTH
Mike
Mike Lischke, MySQL Developer Tools
Oracle Corporation
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