After you get tired of compiling everything but fall in love with Portage, try one of the Gentoo based binary distros. Actually, I haven't done it, but I've heard you can just use their overlays on an existing Gentoo install with minimal fuss.
Name:
Anonymous2006-12-08 16:42
I didn't like Gentoo when I tried it because everything took too long to compile with no significant difference in performance after all the trouble. For the record I did a stage 3 install.
Gentoo is more for hobbyists that tweak everything and ricers. >>1 should stick with ubuntu.