Take the tour ×  From my research, I seem to notice that all
package managers insist on being used as a privileged user and
must be installed into /.  Typically, what I like to do is
create a throwaway account, compile some software, and install
to $HOME for that account. I can try a variety of setups and
then when I'm done, just destroy the account.  However,
compiling software becomes tedious.  My experience is really
just limited to yum, but I don't understand why I wouldn't be
able to drop a repo file into ~/etc/yum.repos.d and have yum
install everything into a home account.  Is there any reason why
package managers must be used as a privleged user to install
software?  share|improve this question add comment  7 Answers
up vote 17 down vote accepted  Binary packages are compiled with
the assumption that they will be installed to specific locations
in /. This is not always easily changed, and it would take
additional QA effort (which is difficult enough in the first
place!) to determine whether specific