More like:
No system package -> installing from user repos -> appimage -> flatpak -> creating your own package -> using a VM with a distro that has the package -> not installing package

If after that you still don't have it, ~~it wasn't meant to be~~ it's probably just not very good software.

make: error: libX11.so permission denied or not found make: failed, something something finishing remaining jobs.

dear god what does it mean

I get that your issue was probably more nuanced than that, but what's so confusing about inatalling missing build dependencies? If projects have a build guide sometimes they'll straight up give you an install command for your distribution. If not, it's up to you to find the package names corresponding to what you need to install since they can differ from distro to distro.

Things have gotten so, so much better over the last 5 or 6 years.

Flatpak, appimage, docker are just brilliant.

I recently discovered nix and am in that honeymoon phase of trying to hit every nail with that hammer.

This is why you use Arch/Nix because the package is likely in their repos.

The software probably still won't work, but you can waste more time on it.

Be me, build a Dockerfile to do all that shit in a nice CI package, still can't run it.

Oh sweet Jesus! LOL! This is me, though not with Linux, but trying to use Macports to get some damn program running and failing miserably because I couldn't get the permissions set on the dependencies correctly.

Rake right to the face. FML.

I was gonna get mad but then I continued reading.

Glad im not the only one. Thats one thing that makes me go man, people will never leave windows for this, this is insanely complex to juat install a program.

I find it fun to learn tho

Cue the Kelsey Grammer growl.

What I love is when you need a core part of the kernel and the only way to install it is by recompiling the kernel and you can't use bottles or docker for some obscure reason (yes this has happened to me no I wasn't happy.)

Are you using a debian-based distro, perhaps? (Espically if it's a stability-focused one)

damn. that's literally me.

I at times have to install completely undocumented software. I love ccmake as it lists all available options. I guess there are other ways, but that makes it so easy.

Then it's just a couple of days figuring out all necessary libraries.

Different packages having conflicting dependency versions needed for installation

Edit: distrobox may be a viable solution to this

No, then you fix the code to work with your current system libraries and upstream the patch and version bump. This happens less on Arch, BTW ;-)

Don't install software outside of official repos or at least avoid doing it like the plague

Use tools like distrobox and toobx to install apps from other distros