Heuristics for solving installation problems on linux

I'm working on linux (Ubuntu) , and often it is quite tedious to install new software. Dependencies are not installed correctly, updates break functionalities, libraries are incompatible. However by googling error codes and reading up on Stack Overflow and other boards one is normally able to resolve an issue, even if the steps involved are hardly ever fully understood. What methods / heuristics do professionals use to install new software or is "error code googling" the only thing that's left? Although I feel quite competent in coding and other computer related topics, it seems that these capabilities are not really helpful and I normally resort to google to solve problems when setting up new software.