Re: [Trisquel-users] Editing Trisquel Source

[jason]

Keep in mind that the package manager offers the keys to the kingdom in terms  
of getting software onto the system.

If you could do do apt update without root that means the package manager's  
database can be updated by anyone. If the database can be changed by anyone  
it introduces potential security problems. A malicious user could go and  
manually edit that database (behind the package manager's back, because the  
database lives on the local file system) to put in whatever they wanted. You,  
as the system administrator, could no longer trust what the package manager  
was telling you.