Comment by redeeman

gcc 3.3 to 3.4 was a big thing, and could cause some issues if people didnt follow the upgrade procedures, and also many c++ codebases would need minor adjustments.. this has been much much less of a problem since.

Additionally gentoo has become way more strict with use flag dependencies, and it also checks if binaries are depending on old libs, and doesnt remove them when updating a package, such that the "app depends on old libstdc++" doesnt happen anymore. It then automatically removes the old when nothing needs it anymore

I have been running gentoo since before 04, continously, and things pretty much just work. I would be willing to put money that I spend less time "managing my OS" than most who run other systems such as osx, windows, debian etc. Sure, my cpu gets to compile a lot, but thats about it.

And yes, the "--omg-optimize" was never really the selling point, but rather the useflags, where theres complete control. Pretty much nothing else comes close, and it is why gentoo is awesome