I have been a GNU/Linux user for about 15 years. During that time, I have alternated between Arch and Gentoo.
Gentoo is very time consuming and complex, and Arch is a pain to keep clean. However, the ability to customize the system to your preferred configuration is a big draw for both.
For a light user like me, patching and customizing to PKGBUILD is just fine. Personally, I sometimes wish for something like the USE flag in Portage.
glibc