diff -r cf5b910ac4c8 Doc/using/unix.rst
--- a/Doc/using/unix.rst	Sat Nov 15 10:58:58 2014 -0800
+++ b/Doc/using/unix.rst	Sun Nov 16 13:30:34 2014 +0100
@@ -64,6 +64,36 @@
 Building Python
 ===============
 
+Before compiling Python
+-----------------------
+
+You might want to install some optional dependencies, for functionality that
+is often expected to be included in a Python build (it can be a bummer to discover these missing and
+have to rebuild your python setup). These include the following, ordered by (very roughly guessed)
+probability that you will need them::
+
+Debian family (Ubuntu...)
+^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
+
+::
+
+  sudo apt-get install build-essential libssl-dev zlib1g-dev libbz2-dev libreadline-dev libncurses5-dev libsqlite3-dev libgdbm-dev libdb-dev libexpat-dev libpcap-dev liblzma-dev libpcre3-dev
+
+If you need tkinter support, add **tk-dev**.
+
+RPM family (CentOS, RHEL...)
+^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
+
+::
+
+  yum groupinstall "Development tools"
+  yum install openssl-devel zlib-devel bzip2-devel readline-devel ncurses-devel sqlite-devel gdbm-devel db4-devel expat-devel libpcap-devel xz-devel pcre-devel
+
+If you need tkinter support, add **tk-devel**.
+
+Compiling Python
+----------------
+
 If you want to compile CPython yourself, first thing you should do is get the
 `source <https://www.python.org/download/source/>`_. You can download either the
 latest release's source or just grab a fresh `clone