Right now you can install new software on Fedora 7 out of the box - without entering a password - by browsing to:
http://addons.mozilla.orgSo, you do not need root access to screw yourself over. Really, everything not
under /home (i.e. under "root" control) is basically unimportant infrastructure goo.
How do I know this? Because almost every time I've tried to upgrade Fedora
something has gone wrong, so I've just preserved my /home, blown away
my disk, reinstalled, and reinstated /home and been at basically the
same point I was before. Just have to enable passwordless sudo.
No one has really solved the problem of trojan software. Dialogs are definitely not a solution. Now, we can have a dialog for it and I wouldn't argue against it - but we shouldn't delude ourselves into thinking that having people enter a password is going to stop them from getting their MP3s to play.