It is really great. It works perfectly for the most common packages, and the others, you have a good frameworks and set of policies to fix it an collaborate.
In general, the benefits are:
- Consistent thirdparty software installation, consistent between platforms and server , inpedently of the Unix underlying platform and OS.
- Package system (portage), that eases maintenance: No more adhoc installations.
- Consistent dependencies and automatic dependency resolution, atomatic download and compilation. Almost everything will compile fine straight away.
- Security: Packaged sums checked and tested.
- A lot of the best opensource software avaiable, easy to install and maintain.
- All software tested and "guaranted" by the technical high-profile gentoo community.
- Standarized way of manage software (gentoo way)
You will have 99% of the job done.