Disagree.

I'd say it's more akin to learning vim, where there's a fairly steep learning curve at the outset, with huge rewards down the line.

Yes, initial install can take a while. Yes, system updates take longer when built than from binaries - but modern hardware makes that a fairly trivial difference. Most people who have a problem with Gentoo either only used it decades ago when build time were a lot longer, or because they heard it takes long, which is way more common than the former.

Huge upside.

You need two sets of the "same" hardware, though. Then you get a build server with -march native

Cooking your own food is great if you value your time at $0. I just eat fast food every day to maximize my free time (spent on doomscrolling).

Gentoo Linux became a lot easier with binary packages and binary linux kernel.

You don't need to customize it, but you can still get packages from third party overlays.

The customizability is available when you need it or want it.

Learning to use gentoo's basic functionality doesn't cost a lot of time, and I recommend utilizing only the basic functionality in most cases.

Just stick to the basics, and you will be fine.

Unfortunately the binary packages are still only available upto x86-64-v3, so users on x86-64-v4 (which I reckon what majority of "advanced" users would be using) and even more so AMD Zen 4/5 users would be missing out on advanced instructions and other compile optimisations.

Luckily Arch/CachyOS users don't have to worry about this as CachyOS offers optimised packages for modern CPUs. Until Gentoo offers an equivalent - without manual compiling needed - I won't consider it.

Most advanced users don't really care much about latest compiler optimizations.

I don't. I think linus torvalds still just runs GNOME or KDE on fedora. Linus doesn't care about compiler optimizations on his own machines.

Does a web developer need to know latest compiler optimizations? Most of them don't.

Respectfully disagree, the kind of "advanced" users who typically use Gentoo actually do care about compiler optimisations.

If you use Gentoo and don't care about it, I'd say you're in the minority of those users.

Machines are faster now, my znver5 build machine finishes "emerge -e @world" in under an hour.

... which is an argument against trying to hyper optimize.

Compilation is not just about optimization. It gives you flexibility and robustness.

Compilation options let you tweak programs. In my direct experiences, gentoo source packages break far less often than arch linux binary packages.

That doesn't make any sense.

C++ compiler and standards writers value your time at even less.

Didn’t believe it until I saw it.

... and your electricity.

ur still on a pentium 2?

try to get other people to value ur time...