After unpacking a ready-to-use binary distribution (i.e., compiled by somebody else), I first install all missing libraries reported by (ignore several possible “not a dynamic executable” messages):
source /where/I/unpacked/my/new/root/bin/thisroot.sh
ldd ${ROOTSYS}/lib/*.so | grep "found" | sort -u
On a Debian-like system (e.g., Ubuntu), one can then use “apt-file” to find, e.g., the missing “libgsl.so.23”:
sudo apt-get install apt-file; sudo apt-file update # needed just once
apt-file search libgsl.so.23 # returns the "libgsl23" package name
See also: