[davydm]

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.

[dapperdrake]

Huge upside.

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