Comment by speed_spread
1 month ago
General administration is similar to Arch or any other regular distro. Package updates necessarily take longer because of recompiling but that's just CPU time. There are precompiled versions of big popular binaries (open office, Firefox, etc) that allow you to save a lot of time if you want.
Where you lose time is in trying to optimize your system and packages using the multiple switches that Gentoo provides. If you're the OCD twiddler type, Gentoo can be both extremely satisfying and major time sink.
When you say "There are precompiled versions of big popular binaries" - were you thinking of "firefox-bin" and such?
I think that for some years already - Gentoo has been providing binaries for "normal" packages - as long as your config/use-flags match (and if you turned on the option/flag to use binary packages).
And of course places with more than just a few Gentoo boxes were usually already running their own BINHOST setups long time ago.
I don't understand the time sink. Isn't spending time knowing intricate details about your system a good thing? You know better than most if you've gone that deep.
It's good for learning for sure but It's very easy to go too deep and spend time on pointless optimizations and customization instead of doing actual work.