The confusion comes from a basic misunderstanding most users have about distros and packages. A Linux distribution package is software ready for you to use. It

The confusion comes from a basic misunderstanding most users have about distros and packages. A Linux distribution package is software ready for you to use. It contains static, "pre-installed" software and configuration, and only performs certain actions that your system can't simply read from a file (like adding a user or group). Everything else in the package is exactly the way it should be to "just work". Changing where the files go would require more complex decisions to make everything "just work". So because we can't change where the files go, any old user can't install it, because that would mean the possibility of overwriting files not owned by that user, or system files. So you need to put the files in privileged locations, but not allow the user to change where that goes. 'sudo' allows this to happen. But why do we even need to type 'sudo' if your [desktop] user will always be capable of running some command with 'sudo' anyway? Because sometimes, someone or some thing other than you will try to run a command as root, and you should be the only person that authorizes that. Requiring the command, and the command requiring a password to run, is the simplest way to do this. All JuNest is doing is putting an entire copy of a Linux distribution in your home directory, so everything is owned by you. There are no privileged files, but more importantly, if you hose the files, you can just re-install JuNest. If you hosed your main machine, you'd have to reinstall your machine.