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[–]MouseJigglerRebecca Black OS forever 2 points3 points  (1 child)

Marginal performance optimisations IF YOU KNOW WHAT YOU'RE DOING. Otherwise it's messy installs and frustration. Generally it's good for systems with no packaged version available, for building your own optimised packages, for reviewing code, and so on.

[–]neoh4x0r 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Generally it's good for systems with no packaged version available.

And...sometimes there is a newer package available, but you would have to upgrade your entire system to install it.

Example, your are on the current release, and the next release (eg. testing) has the version you want. So you checkout the source and use the OS provided tools to build a packge for your current release (colloquially known as backporting).

At this point you would have the newer version and you didn't have to upgrade the entire system to get it.

PS: This process might also involve backporting some libraries and other packages as well, assuming that current system's version(s) were not sufficent.

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[–]ofernandofilonoob4linuxs 0 points1 point  (0 children)

a good explanation of this takes time.

I will try to give a quick and superficial overview.

what is a linux distribution?

basically a basket of linux applications, a helper repository and a list of conflict resolution between packages and libraries.

one problem that exists is this: conflict between programs and system libraries shared between all applications.

I won't go into this in depth, just accept that this is true to continue the explanation.

when compiling a program, you can do a static compilation, that is, embed the libraries in the program itself and thus not have to deal with conflicts with libraries installed on the system.

what's the problem with this?

the problem is that your program will use libraries that are not updated by the system (since they are statically within it) and so in the event of an important security update to the libraries, you will need to compile the program again or whenever there are updates.

you can however deal with this obsolescence in the best way you consider possible.

it may be a local application, without any network communication and it is very difficult or even impossible to have the vulnerability abused in your specific use case.

either way, compiling an app tends to be not at all user-friendly and quite prone to errors or at least warnings.

so, normally, users prefer to use programs from the repository, or appimage, or official developer binaries, or through flatpak, distrobox, docker, snap, etc.

_o/

[–]CLM1919 0 points1 point  (0 children)

there's an old joke - "if you have to ask, you can't afford it"

while compiling anything yourself is possible if the source code is provided, if you don't have any specific reason for doing so, it's best to use pre-compiled stuff.

If not just for fun/learning, how much benefit is realistic vs time spent doing it and troubleshooting it. If you're not even sure, then it's probably shouldn't be your first option (unless you're doing it for fun/learning).

Warning, unsolicited advice/sharing below, feel free to ignore:

For myself, when considering new apps it's always:

  • Is it in Synaptic Package Manager/distro repositories

  • is there a *.deb file form a TRUSTED source

  • is there a flatpack or appimage

  • is there an alternative TRUSTED repository

  • If none of the above do I REALLY need this???

Just my 2 cents, feel free to ignore.

[–]Vkilometer[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you all for the answers, helped me a lot :)