Gentoo developer Michał Górny has written a lengthy
article explaining the philosophy and purpose of the Gentoo Linux
distribution, in response to a
thread on Mastodon:

Gentoo is a source-first distribution, which means the primary
method of installing software is to build it from source. Of course,
that doesn't mean manually building stuff, following some kind of
how-to: finding all the dependencies, installing them manually, going
through a series of magical incantations, and eventually ending up no
better than if we were installing a binary package. The package
manager takes care of all the necessary steps and more, making package
installs easy; well, at least unless something fails. But I'm
digressing...

[...] We try to build a friendly and welcoming community around Gentoo,
and we truly want using Gentoo be an enjoyable experience. We want it
to be a system that doesn't betray you.

https://lwn.net/Articles/1075148/
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