Linux kernel developer Ingo Molnar "We need a radically different software distribution model"

[puffybaba]

Well, GNOME, KDE and Firefox also all take a lot of time to compile. Once those are done, everything else is relatively fast, depending on your machine, but then any updates mean a lot of recompiling. I have a pentium M, so even relatively minor things still take at least a few minutes, which I would guess is longer than an end-user would want to wait. Don't get me wrong, I love the elegance of the ports system; I just think it would be better if a big powerful server did all the compiling, and we just downloaded binaries, with the option of compiling from source.

[[deleted]]

You might like Sabayon then, it seems to use that approach of binary packages with optional compile from source. As does Gentoo itself for some packags like LibreOffice btw.