[nitrogen]

It'd probably take about a week for a noob to get a reasonable desktop up and running with LFS or Gentoo, but that week will be some of the most valuable education about software build processes and operating system design one can find.

[stinos]

I beg to differ. I don't recall how long it took me exactly, but the only thing I learnt about build processes was, both on LFS and Gentoo: if it fails to compile, lookup on google what to do and apply that. If all else fails, edit the code and hope it does not cause a waterfall effct.And I even cared about learning. If you just follow the manual you'll have learned nothing at all.

[nitrogen]

That is exactly the kind of experience that forces one to understand the interactions of complex systems and learn how to debug them.