Interesting finds.

Using RPM does not work and it will ask for a root password in order to install, except none ever work.
For that, you should use alien to install rpm's. Also for actions in the GUI the require root privledges, you should first set a root password like this-

su
passwd root
[enter root's password twice]
then do the GUI thing that requires you to enter a root password and use the password you just set.

You can't really install anything unless you have the OS installed to the hard drive, though you can hack up some scripts to install from source code into your ramdisk temporarily.[/quote]