I first tried to run ParaView (built inside the Docker container) on my host machine (Ubuntu 16.04).
Unsupported. If you want to run paraview, just download the release.
how were the official binaries built?
Using a docker setup similar to paraview-plugin-builder, and then using the packaging tools that make sure all libraries are available in the package.
Having access to this setup will not help you.
Build redistributable ParaView (SDK) using ParaViewPluginBuilder
Not supported, and not redistributable anyway. If it was, we would already be providing it for people to download.
@ben.boeckel : is this correct ?