[Lilux-help] Gentoo / source-based

Hi, as Slackware seems to be on the decline, I am currently looking for alternatives to consider in case Slackware stops existing altogether. Gentoo comes very close to a lot of my criteria: excellent security information, excellent documentation, an active community, support for several processors and a large central software repository featuring not only the latest version but also older, perhaps more stable versions. My main concern is the source-based approach. I developed an allergy towards source-based software installation when compiling KDE 3.2 for FreeBSD, and I expect Gentoo to be no better in that respect. I know that a stage-3 install will save me from compiling anything but the kernel at first, but an upgrade will certainly involve hours of waiting for make and portage to finish. No more "oh, wait, I'll just install this program and then we may go on". So what's the use? It appears that Gentoo is not noticeably faster than other distros. One advantage of the source-based approach is certainy the ability to configure each soft, if you wish to, perhaps yielding in smaller and maybe more secure binaries. But then again, disk space is cheap and having to have a C compiler on a production machine is not always a security advantage either. Hence, my questions: -1- Does anybody use Gentoo, and what is their experience? -2- Has anybody really a punchy argument why source-based software installation is useful? Regards, -pu