I notice that if I want to install a program like Mozilla's newest version I have to log off my user account in Red Hat then sign in under root. Is there any way to do this without always having to sign into the root account?

For something like Mozilla, if it comes packages as a binary tarball, you can extract it in your home directory and use it. Firebird allows this, so does Thunderbird.

When compiling, you can set an option to compile the application in your home directory rather than /bin or /usr/bin or /usr/local/bin for example.

I don't know about installing RPMs without being a root user. I believe you have to be root to install RPMs. But a normal user can install applications to their home dir if they are binary tarballs or source tarballs. Just change the target directory of the build.

the best way to go about it is by typing "su" in your command line prompt. it will then ask for your root password, and if its correct you will have root (super-user) priviledges in that terminal. to give up those privilidges merely type "exit" into the terminal and it will continue your terminal session under the user you logged in as. but this will only help if you are installing the program under the terminal (which is often the case). hope that helped ^_^