Having done both: deriving a distro from Gentoo is easier if you have no real internal build infrastructure, much harder if you do
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Gentoo also wins if you're maintaining your own thing with no real intention to ever rebase
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...Jesus Christ I've been involved in the early days of at least 4 derivative Linux distros
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Replying to @dsilverstone
Five if we count Debian GNU/NetBSD?
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