It is a good idea not to get into the trap of installing everything with package managers, especially when they are not available or even older versions which might have a security flaw.
I never hesitate to build and / or install manually if a package is not available; and often I find the manual builds / installs are better because I understand it more completely when I do it myself.
The term "smooth" is relative.
In the time it takes to search the net and ask question in forums, you could have installed it manually