Fedora 12 lets unprivileged users install packages

Not *all* of them. I can't see anything particularly wrong with RealtimeKit (other than its use of dbus with its horrible XML configuration file format, but at least admins rarely need to edit that), and DeviceKit-*'s quiet passing-on of udev events is a hell of a lot less vile than HAL with its disgusting media polling and automatic unejection of CDs you want to take out of the drive and ridiculous quirks files in a single-purpose language and God only knows what else.

The other Kits, yes, I could easily dump the lot of them off a cliff.