Short Answer: Yes, shouldn't be a problem really as long as the admin has all the development tools, libs, etc. already installed. Depending on how you like to organize your home directory, you might want to keep everything installed inder home under one directory, or just let things create their standard tree under home. Personally, I throw all my stuff into a ~/programs. For Opera and Acrobat reader, you'll want to grab the non packaged versions (the tar archives.) If they have an installer, point them to your home directory. Once installed, edit your path so that your home directory's bin path takes precidence over the system's bin path. For Opera, your best bet is to use the static not dynamic build. For emacs, you'll be compiling as you would any normal Linux app, except you'll specify --prefix=/home/username. If emacs has unmet dependencies, you'll have to go out and comple them from source as well and install them under your home directory. -- Andrew S. Zbikowski | http://andy.zibnet.us SELECT * FROM users WHERE clue >0; 0 rows returned