Today I had the need to install some FreeBSD and Ubuntu packages inside my home directory because I did not have root permissions to install them.
It was quite simple to install the packages on FreeBSD
pkg_add -rRP /home/bramp nano
Where nano is the name of the package I wanted.
I should point out you don’t need to be root to do this!, but the installed packages only work for you, and in future could cause you hassle if the base OS is updated.
On Ubuntu I however failed :( I tried the “–root” option and did some Googleing but I didn’t find a solution. Unitl then I’ll just install from source.