There should be a standardized way to install applications to one user account only, without the need for administrator/root/superuser password authentication.
Many, many programs, from movie players to text editors to video games to business utilities, could easily be installed without exposing the whole system. So why pose a security threat for no reason?
In the spirit of Linux/UNIX, users should be able to do a lot of things without affecting the core system or other users. And users often want or need to run new programs for whatever reason.
So, there should a standard install folder for each user, such as:
/home/username/.installed-packages
The subdirectories in the folder would be like all the typical system directories, such as /usr/bin and others. These directories would also be added to the list of places that bash looks for commands.
There could also be a folder for third-party installs for all users:
/public-install
which would have chmod 777 so that any user can install and run software that other users can try too. And of course any user can mess up the folder, but that's okay because it wouldn't mess up the system, and no one would lose important documents (only downloaded programs).
Programs like apt-get or synaptic could be modified to install to these folders. The trickier part would be to set up a log of what packages are owned by who. User packaging should definately be kept separate from the classic root packaging.
And of course there are packages that should only be installed as root (such as system updates). But by making every program require root to install, it either restricts users or puts the whole system at risk. After all, it seems the only time a Linux system doesn't work is when someone did something stupid as root. So why not just avoid the problem altogether?
