[LAU] Rolling ur own software

Are there any real benefits to building software on your local machine vs installing binaries, in this case all largely Ubuntu based? I've finally got this old mackbook 1,1 (Nov 2006 white 13") running linux audio with comparable results to its native OSx 10.6. Whatevah Snow LeopRd was. Set up dual boot. Basically installed "Linux-lite", pulled in kxstudio goodies and kernel. 3.13 seems to work best on T2500 dual core @ 2ghz. I can run 12 live tracks recording at 44.1/24 with 128/2 & almost zero xruns. Lots of neat hardware in the Mac for a 'puter of this vintage ... Only 32 bit. Processor is 64bit but some EFI issue I believe, kills ability to boot 64bit systems. I've removed lots of software I won't use on it like cups, samba, misc daemons nibbling away at memory n cycles. Xfce desktop. Can I gain any performance from building certain software on the machine? Mostly, I guess low or more efficient resource usage. Kernel included. Right now running SMP lowtatency kernel. I'm still if the belief that a RT kernel would be better but obviously in the deb world, not so many available. Thanks for any input. ~ Russell