The Frustration Was Worth It
I had been wanting to build a source-based Linux OS on my laptop for some time now and recently decided to have a go at Gentoo. I knew going in that it would be a little bit of a challenge as I had never used anything but the binary pre-packaged distros before now.
After a great deal of hair-pulling, frustration, and giving up three times, I finally got the OS built and running. I feel pretty good about it. I have to say that in the past few days I have learned more about my computer and Linux, and the way they work, than in the past several years of using pre-packaged operating systems.
Having been compiled and optimized on my computer, the system runs a good deal faster than any of the others every did. Boot up is short and sweet and applications launch in the blink of an eye. Not bad for an old Armada M700 running on a PII 399MHz with only 256M of RAM. I know, not exactly top of the line, but it's what I have at the moment.
It's been a frustrating and difficult few days, but it was also a lot of fun. I am now thinking that my next project may be a Linux From Scratch, but that can wait a while. I'd recommend everyone try it at least once. Very educational.