LMAO, back in my Slackware days (3.4, 3.6, 4.0, 7.0), If I had to build from source, which was most things, step1: ./configure step2: install the missing package step3: goto step1 until no missing packages identified step4: make step5: make install
Sometimes my packages were too old, So I would just go to step1 for each package that also needed to be newer. I'm not even a Linux Expert, and I definitely wasn't a Linux Expert then. All the building from source helps me jump into software projects and become productive real quick though.
yeah, when I had a Win2k or XP machine to play video games, I would run into issues all the time. Fix Windows on my machine helped me fix other people machines. After a more than a decade of not fixing a Windows machine, best I can do is google around. Same thing they can do.