Authenticate, Authenticate,... Can I scratch my nose without Authenticate ?

Hello,

Finally decided to get serious about trying to find an alternative solution to the product from Redmond. Vista, Windows 7 have helped push me in that direction
I have a small home network for the family. The only real issue is limiting some access to the kids, which I can do with the router
So security is very low priority. Particularly so, on the box that I am currently using for trying out distros
I have installed Lubuntu 13.04 (64 bit) Only one user identified on it
I am constantly being annoyed with slightly different pop-ups asking to authenticate for just about anything I want to do..
- mount a drive.. - Authenticate
- check for updates.. - Authenticate
- take a peek into some directory.. - Authenticate
- Scratch my nose.. - Authent.. well not yet.. but I'm getting nervous.. :-)

This is the same kind of nonsense that annoyed the hell out of me using Windows. But at least I can eliminate it by turning off Defender
Is there ANY way, to silence this nonsense in Lubuntu. ?
Or is there some Ubuntu variant that is not this paranoid ?

Note that I have also tried Puppy Linux, and I don't have the constant requests to "Authenticate". But Puppy has other issues, such as being way too minimalist for my needs

Thanks