Are there any risks or disadvantages to building software from source, compared to installing a package? Can it mess with my system in any way?

I usually avoid it because I’ve found it to be a faff and often doesn’t work anyway but in a couple of cases it has been necessary.

  • ShimitarAEnglish
    8·
    6 hours ago

    Gentoo user here.

    Of course I always build every package from source because that’s how Gentoo works.

    Well, you get well optimized software for your specific cpu and architecture that often will not run on a different CPU. At the cost of lots of time.

    For big ones like Firefox or rust I always choose the prebuilt ones… But everything else is from sources.

    Also, another great advantage is to customize package features to your likings, like disable an audio backend or enable another, and such.