guides VS distros

i agree with this piece, as someone who likes man pages to the extent of having ported significant amounts of the s6-ecosystem docs to mdoc(7), and as someone who has also written a number of guides.

And the -bin kernel can be used to easily get many of the settings you'll need when you build your own kernel.

Gah, didn't even consider that the OP might have meant the cover image! Probably at least partly because i know that EPUBs don't necessarily need a cover image - i learnt this as a result of learning how to create a minimal EPUB. (And i actually have many EPUBs without a cover image.)

The point is to be able to customise where you want/need to, and to not have to when you don't. The -bin packages for FireFox, LibreOffice and Zig meet my needs, so i use them. i used the -bin package for the kernel to help me create a minimal kernel for my hardware, because messing around with kernel configuration is not my idea of a good time. But more generally, compiling allows me to specify things like: "i want packages compiled with USB and PCRE support where available, but i don't want them compiled with GNOME support."

Even though D-Bus is probably most often encountered by people in the context of GUI sessions, it's not specific to that; it can be (and is) used outside of such contexts. The widespread misunderstandings i've encountered about D-Bus over the years led me to write a short guide, "D-Bus: the essentials".

(Some related background you might find helpful: a guide i wrote about D-Bus and X sessions).

But more generally, you might find it helpful to refer to this guide i wrote on creating a minimal Gentoo-patched kernel via gentoo-kernel-bin (which can then be regularly updated just like any other Gentoo package).

Take advantage of savedconfig where appropriate, e.g. for kernel builds. In particular, this can be used to easily create a minimal kernel for your hardware.

(Further to this, you might be interested in my guide to creating a minimal kernel for your hardware.)

[a] i've actually written a quickstart guide to writing man pages with mdoc(7), to try to encourage others to use the semantics-oriented mdoc(7) macros for man pages, rather than the presentation-oriented man(7) macros.

I guess I'll keep posting comments about https://www.calculate-linux.org/

Having started with Linux using Gentoo - after some attempted excursions into Debian/Ubuntu, then at work CentOS and even few months of having to use Slackware on servers until I finally convinced my boss that his T50-something Thinkpad will do same or better on Gentoo ... (and he won't need to manually chase up dependencies).

And even thought already for years compiling most of the things doesn't take that long. Just for not having to compile bunch of packages where I'm using standard/default config - I've tried Sabayon (back when it was still almost kind of Gentoo), went back to Gentoo ...

And then for almost a decade now - I've been extremely happy with https://www.calculate-linux.org/

https://www.calculate-linux.org/ does

Also don't overlook Calculate Linux as an option for getting into Gentoo using a GUI installer, pre-configured desktops, and a binary package repo for most of the common linux packages -- yet giving you a standard Gentoo system to work with. Apparently you would be interested in the Gnome Edition.

If we follow that project car metaphor - https://www.calculate-linux.org/ is project car where you can get all parts pre-machined (already compiled) and you can still customize bits and pieces, or even whole thing.

That said - it's default config/profile and use flags are such that it's rare some package needs to be compiled.

Mb you want to try this https://www.calculate-linux.org/ It's rebranded Gentoo with precompiled packages.

Calculate Linux

The best of all worlds, for the OP, may be Calculate Linux which provides binaries for most packages while still allowing any package to be installed from the massive gentoo repositories (including overlays such as those for Common Lisp and Haskell).