I don't use Gentoo, but isn't the whole point that you compile everything? Could anyone explain some pros/cons of Gentoo other than squeezing out performance for your specific machine?
- for the binary version the difference might not be as significant but bit for bit I'd say it's still more configurable than Arch
- in terms of choices they've made about conventional system defaults, there's more interesting options on offer: especially when it comes to Systemd -vs- OpenRC & networkmanager -vs- netifrc
- I'm not sure how true this last point is, but I get the impression the system of overlays & profiles is a little more expressive & powerful than equivalents in other distros. E.g. Manjaro is often considered to be something of bastardisation of Arch by virtue of some underlying design decisions made in "forking / extending" it, & compatibility is limited. On the other hand things like Funtoo & Pentoo are really just Gentoo at heart, using its core features for packaging distro customisations.
The problem has always been that while you had all this choice, the one choice you didn't have was to just use regular old binary packages for the things you didn't have to customize. This complaint has finally culminated in TFA.