Yeah, there are a number of different package formats out there. .deb, .rpm, .tgz, and some others. Still, there are a couple of ways you could get around that, basically by ignoring packages altogether. You could just archive the dolphin-emu executable file, and tell users what libraries it dynamically links to, so they know which ones they've got to install before running it. Alternatively, you could try to build a static binary file instead, so users don't have to worry about libraries. I think PCSX2 and iDeaS offer archived binaries for Linux, not sure if they're static or dynamic, as I haven't messed with either. In any case, the files aren't maintained by a package manager, but that has never seemed to be a problem for Windows or OS X users. We could deal with it. :p
I'm partial to building Dolphin myself though, as I really wouldn't want to miss out on any optimizations. Plus, it's easy enough. Before I tried building Dolphin this past winter, I thought it'd need all these libraries that I hadn't installed yet, but in fact I had all of them already. Compiled it perfectly on my first attempt, and I was impressed by how uneventful it was. No errors, no missing files, nothing.
I'm partial to building Dolphin myself though, as I really wouldn't want to miss out on any optimizations. Plus, it's easy enough. Before I tried building Dolphin this past winter, I thought it'd need all these libraries that I hadn't installed yet, but in fact I had all of them already. Compiled it perfectly on my first attempt, and I was impressed by how uneventful it was. No errors, no missing files, nothing.