Another way to avoid compiling things yourself (I tend to try to avoid that at all costs as it makes keeping the system up to date a lot harder) is to run a separate system in a chroot jail:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BasicChroot
It's very easy to set up, and you can update both outside and inside the chroot jail just by using (twice, obviously) apt-get or aptitude. The downside is that it's kind of overkill, and you'll need a second IP to do it. The upside is that you can have different packages installed inside the chroot jail.