From my experience with corporate IT departments is that if you ask nicely, you can install what you want if you explain the usage and that doesn't collide with

From my experience with corporate IT departments is that if you ask nicely, you can install what you want if you explain the usage and that doesn't collide with any tool that is already in use. If you get a linux machine, you probably even get administrative rights, but that depends a bit on the company. But many IT departments only provide rudimentary support and you are responsible for the system working. Of course IT is wary of users installing random software because that is their job. But if you communicate your intend it didn't ever pose a problem for me. If you have a windows machine you should be aware that there are portable apps, which don't require administrative privilege. So you could just download Firefox, 7zip or any editor you would like to use. I would still communicate it to IT, but you wouldn't need to bother them. If I had to ask for every package I need or just want to test, IT wouldn't have any free minute anymore. But they might want to check if you are responsible about your downloads. Corporations often disallow SSH, so if you want to login to any remote systems, IT might need to build a tunnel for you. They generally dislike that because of the security risks, so developers often get placed into their own subnet to limit any fallout in case of security breaches.