The Grumpy Editor's guide to (some) development distributions

I agree. Gentoo's flexibility is far and away its best feature. The flexibility of selecting
which level of stability is desired for which packages is a great way to ensure that core
essential packages like glibc, xorg, etc remain stable, but less essential packages, desktops,
etc, can get the unstable treatment, all with a minimal amount of fuss.  Now the compilation
times can be a hassle, but distcc and a pair of dual core machines can take a big bite out of
that. In fact, for smaller packages, it almost seems faster than having apt grind away at the
hard drive on its db for a while before downloading the binary and then grinding away at the
drive some more after installing (this anecdotal perception may be from my experience with
Ubuntu that was on an older laptop with a slower hard drive).