>>2
Is more or less fundamentally right, though computers are fast enough and broadband prevalent enough anymore that source-based distros are no longer as onerous as a lot of people make them out to be. Gentoo's Portage is good at sane package management (while not being 18 months out-of-date like Debian Sarge), has a stellar init script, a great kernel team (how many architectures do you need?), and the best documentation and community of any distro. There is a tangible benefit to a properly configured kernel and software compiled for the architecture, too, despite what funroll-loops will have you believe.
The caveats to running Gentoo include that it can be difficult for a new user to understand what they're doing and why. Gentoo was made BY people that like to tinker and experiment FOR that kind of person. Sometimes, there are problems, and you have to go rooting about to find the solution. Sometimes you'll do something that SEEMS innocuous enough and X will just up and break on you.
In the end if you want to tinker about and actually maybe LEARN something more than how to use sudo, go with Gentoo. If you don't want to update or don't have time, that's fine- once it's running it's stable for day-to-day usage.
Hey,
>>2, why was it so hard to deal with blocked packages (just unmerge the blocker- real simple)? I think all the circular dependencies have been pretty much resolved by now too (like the hal/dbus one), and there generally aren't any broken packages unless you're running ~* or some silly rubbish.
tl;dr - Try it, but don't be pissed off when you actually have to think.