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I think the others missed pointing out why you might want to compile from source. Pre built binaries are useful if default vanilla build options will suit you. There are various use cases where this is not desirable though and rosinstall'ing ( http://www.ros.org/wiki/electric/Installation/Ubuntu/Source) becomes easier.

• setting custom cflags (eg optimisation for an intel atom cpu, or for size or globally setting a macro)
• changing the build mode (debug, ...)
• cross compiling

Note that you probably want to avoid recompiling pre built debs as you will have to muck around with permissions and you will have to watch for whenever the debs install an updated version.