how to install software locally?

[Santanu Chatterjee]

First of all, thanks for all your responses,

Fajar Priyanto: As you said, I probably just can't use apt to locally
install software. That answers my question. I had checked the apt manual
searching through all the options. So, I guess I did not miss any option then.

Hugo Heden: Thanks for the links. I was indeed thinking about klik, but I
did not know about glick.
(Actually, I was also thinking about more roundabout ways
like user mode linux, bochs, qemu, etc. Unfortunately, none of them are
installed on the system. I will probably try to use at least one of
these in my home
directory (compiling from source, I guess), and see if that works. I just hope
I don't stumble into a kernel module that needs to be loaded for, say, qemu
to work. I don't have sudo access either... which of course would have solved
the problem anyway.)

Regards,
Santanu Chatterjee