On Mon, 21 Oct 2002, Andrew Bates wrote:

> I assume you all notice a trend that has begun...
> 
> people are asking about where to get an rpm.. rather than a source.. and
> they are asking about certain distributions... has the idea of compiling
> your own optimized binary gone down the proverbial toliet? Let alone
> figuring out what libraries are needed? Or do users just not realize
> that Linux is Linux?

Quite the opposite.  I wouldn't worry about it.
 
Gentoo lists 4731 source tarballs directly from the original authors in
their distribution tree at my last count (8.4GBytes!)  A single command
line can compile all or part of those into your system, depending on what
you want.  I compile everything and never have to worry about finding
libraries or needing to find files.

I hear debian also manages dependancies automatically.