Packagekit allows LOCAL users (who already have been given an account, by definition) to install software.<p>More to the point, LOCAL users are likely to consist only of a single user, ie: the owner of the machine, in a the vast majority of installs. If you want a server, don't use Fedora. Fedora is bleeding edge redhat style desktop, end of story. If you want to use fedora as a server, go ahead, just disable this feature.<p>Is it so weird that the Fedora engineers wanted to make life a little less painful for the kind of user that has no idea what sudo is, never mind the wheel group, or how to configure PAM? I think we all fall into this trap (myself included), where things we had to learn seem easy now. They aren't. Not by a long shot.<p>Besides, Centos 5.4 is right over there. Right tool for the job folks.
I think this is a good feature. I am often on a client Linux box without root and need something trivial like mg... but end up having to "install" from source because I don't have permission to install the package. If I could do that anyway, that would be good.<p>I also think packages should install into ~ like this, rather than into the global system.