Linux Distros

What is the best Distro to run and why?

Really, I'd like to know why many of you hate Ubuntu so much. I've been using it for a long time now and it does everything I need, giving me an easy-to-use secure Linux distribution that ``just works". What exactly do you believe I'm missing out on? Is the much-heralded "Gentoo" really worth compiling everything from source for?

I've been reading and trying to go through Linux From Scratch (LFS) to learn more about linux, but after I learn about all of that, does it really matter if I use Ubuntu or not? How fast do you really need an average computer these days to go, and is the little bit of extra speed really worth it?

tl;dr
Best Linux Distro, and why. Is the Optimization really that important?

Also, as a sidenote: any advice on customizing Linux with certain additions and tweaks (like RatPoison as I've heard mentioned before) would be great. What are some really useful tools that aren't already given?

I tried XMonad recently. Thought it was pretty cool. I'm trying Ratpoison at the moment and I think I like it more. It reminds me of Emacs. Each window is like a buffer in Emacs, and each frame is like an Emacs window, and switching between them is just as easy. Instead of C-x b, you have C-t ' and you enter the title of the window, with tab completion, of course. I fucking love C-x b in Emacs, it's so much faster than any other way of working I've used. I think it's great that my window manager can support the same setup.