Fedora had this problem last time I used it, things like adding printers prompted for the actual root password (according the docs Fedora 16 still prompts for the root password). Ubuntu (and Mint) got it right. There are privilege groups that can be set so things like adding printers and wifi networks don't ask for a password. For things the user doesn't have privileges for, if they are an admin it will prompt for their user password (sudo-style) instead of the root password.

As Linus said, the SUSE and Fedora way makes it hard to deploy in a business setting where you want users to be able to administrate their own machines but you don't want them to have the root password.