[plug] Gentoo vs [insert ur fav distro here]

[Jan Hurst]

Hi,

i have been using gentoo (www.gentoo.org) for sometime and find it
great. 

unfortunately, the packages are updated quite often (good thing) but as
most packages are compiled from scratch this can take a fair amount of
time (bad thing - mozilla takes *hours* for example, don't even start on
kde ;).

i am considering switching to a binary distribution and using something
like debian. i understand debians packages are updated quite frequently
but at least i wont have to recompile mozilla every other week (for
example... it takes AGES).

one of the "selling points" of gentoo is that by compiling (and
optimising) packages a large speed increase is gained. i dont know how
accurate this is but i am interested in getting some opinions. does
debian have 686 (P4)optimised binary packages? will i notice a speed
difference? are the gentoo claims of massive performance increases truth
or myth? (gentoo certainly seems faster than any other distro ive
used... but that is hardly from any real testing ;)

any comments or suggestions would be muchly appreciated.

-jan