I'm curious too. What about the Gentoo approach? Is it the only distro that isn't a flavor?
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Is Gentoo worth the extra effort in Lazarus picture?
Not really. The only real benefit of Gentoo is the big amount of packages (but Debian has almost as many). The Gentoo ebuild system allows defining and configuring the sources in a flexible way.
A female geek (yes!) in our engineering school claimed that Gentoo is the only distro flexible enough for her. She has many distros around but they restrict her too much.
I haven't noticed that myself but maybe I am just not geeky enough. Years ago I tried to install Gentoo but failed which kind of proves it.
Lately I have used Sabayon which is basically a precompiled Gentoo but has very different properties. It is easy to install and use, works "out of the box".
You still can use Gentoo ebuilds when you need them. Highly recommended!
The only minus comes from a poor support of some hardware configurations.
I don't see any big problem with Ubuntu / Kubuntu either, although I think it is over-hyped. Good documentation is the best part of Ubuntu. It is important of course.
Juha