Gentoo for All the Unusual Reasons

AlexChao

You might think of Gentoo as a bleeding-edge distribution for development workstations, but the simple packaging system can make it a good choice for any production system that needs to stay up to date.
I have a confession to make. I use Gentoo Linux. My colleagues at the various Linux User Group meetings I attend think I'm nuts. Everyone knows that Gentoo is a source-based Linux distribution. Gentoo's reputation (in large measure pushed by the people who develop the distribution) is that it's for people who want super crazy optimizations, and it really is suitable only for those who use desktops. In truth, Gentoo is ideal for a whole bunch of other, unexpected, reasons. Much to my surprise, people actually are using Gentoo in production environments for these very reasons.

http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/7438