There was a lot of building from sources in mid-1990's (Linux 0.99 and all that), but ever since Ubuntu came out, there's been just no need.
I'm not missing that X86Config tweaking, either. But perhaps I've grown old; when I find a laptop that doesn't come up with X in RHEL, I just think it's a bad laptop.
With 10 years on Linux only I had to do it a few times. I stared doing it more often on FreeBSD, out of my will, not being forced to compile stuff.