Gotcha. But thanks to /g/? Didn't know that existed so how would I have found it on my own? And "lots of learning" despite you having way less headaches? I'm a little confused as some of your answers inspire more questions.
The Gentoo Handbook is an amazing tool to learn linux. By the end, you have an expert's understanding of how Linux works, and how to install it without a GUI (or even a package manager). I learned it during the "Stage 1 era", when the install started with bootstrapping, then building your compiler before installing the rest of your system. Nowadays, you partition disks, format, chroot in, set timezone and encoding, untar the stage 3 tarball, emerge --sync, build your kernel (which is the hardest part), install a bootloader, install wpa_supplicant, and you're done. It's about 30% more difficult than an Arch install, becuase you probably will screw up your first kernel configuration and make a nonbooting kernel, booting to a black screen. But unlike Other OS's and distros, when it breaks in Gentoo, it's probably your fault.
I have way less headaches, because chromebooks are braindead to deploy this way. flash a bios, and then install the binaries once booted off a LiveUSB. Quickpkg allows you to make binaries of your existing system (built for Sandy Bridge, until I decommission the C710's, then I'll build for haswell) with all your custom flags already set, so VLC and other apps are far more robust than their Ubuntu/Redhat versions. Gentoo is also the only distro other than GalliumOS that actually has working Elan touchpads for many chromebooks (thanks to Hugh Greenburg of GalliumOS's patches that I'm maintaining for newer kernels), as the patches have not been included in Arch or other distributions's kernels.
I run a Poettering-free install (JACK instead of PA, wpa_gui instead of NetworkManager, OpenRC instead of systemd), so having one master install I can re-deploy in the amount of time it takes to brew coffee is pretty handy, especially considering de-poetterizing a new Debian/RHEL/Fedora/Arch install is painful, if not nigh-impossible, and at the very least time-consuming.
Calculate basically takes Gentoo and precompiles it with certain defaults.
This means that the Calculate maintainers have made certain choices for the user, while Gentoo proper would have left them up to the user.
Haha. That is pretty evil given my experiences starting with command line Linux back in the day. Far as learning, I've heard that before about Gentoo. Thought about doing it at some point. Right now, kind of mixed between learning BSD or Linux as the security enhancements I create might need to temporarily stay proprietary to support their development. BSD vs GPL you know. I mean, I'd give back bug-fixes or feature developments where possible but differentiator has to be secretish.
"But unlike Other OS's and distros, when it breaks in Gentoo, it's probably your fault."
I'm avoiding that right now but fine with the concept. Reminds me of Mentor's Hacker Manifesto we used to quote to justify such responsibility.
"so having one master install I can re-deploy in the amount of time it takes to brew coffee is pretty handy"
That is handy. I've always especially liked how the source-based distros were customized to one's own hardware. That drastically increases the initial deployment time but significantly reduces many issues along the way.