actually I do compile stuff myself as well sometimes, it can be as straightforward as it could ever be or be a complete hassle lowkey impossible really depends on the software
usually the worst thing about compiling is tracking down all the libraries, the best tip I can give: if the software is present in your package manager you can usually get all the build dependencies that way, on DNF-based distros i think it is something like `dnf builddep` (or maybe its builddeps i don't remember) most package managers got a similar command
(why would you compile yourself if it's already in the package manager ? if the package is outdated, if it is broken, if you want to use a fork that's not in the package manager, if you got your own modifications to do to the software, probably other reasons (like i like to compile Minetest myself cause it allow me to have the whole game in a single folder and not scattered all around my system, and it allow me to keep multiple versions of the game))
(I'm not a slackware user at least not yet, I only have my thinkpad on slackware everything else is too recent to run on the latest stable release of slackware, my gaming computers are running openmandriva, my web browsing machine is on Artix which I'm only keeping because it is too much of a hassle to change the OS)
Not every piece of software has tarballed binaries though. Sometimes you gotta build or mess around with packages for other package managers :/
Steam's got a Debian package, but I don't know about tarballs for it for example. On one hand I get the appeal, on another package managers are just really easy to use and updating isn't the Windows mess of "every program has an updater" or "you gotta check for updates and update yourself".
yea not all software give a tarball and that's a
big problem, life could be so much easier
it's probably no problem to just use the deb package just gotta be careful about dependencies
