I am addressing a newbie and not an experienced user. I qualify that in the
next sentence. Linux users who know what they are doing have many varied
reasons to compile from source, but a newbie is asking for trouble. One of
the reasons for using Ubuntu is that it has so many pre-compiled packages
through the repositories, through added sources and through PPAs. If one was
using Arch or Gentoo then it would be reasonable to assume that the user
expects to compile. One does not expect Ubuntu users to be doing this as a
first line of action. Of course, they CAN, but they should have a reason for
doing so, such as it is unavailable otherwise or they want to improve
performance. A newbie has no business doing it, IMO, unless they do not care
about messing up their system and want to learn. So, I stick by what I wrote
with the provision that it is taken in context.

There is established practice which is to use the repositories and a package
manager. Newbies should learn to use the package manager early on and learn
best practice before they deviate from the norm. Otherwise they will not
learn the fundamentals and get into all kinds of trouble. If they want to
practice compiling I would suggest that they try it first on a VM with LFS
or Gentoo. This offers a measure of protection for their daily use machine.