I have been using Gentoo 10+ years, you can save time using other distros but you'll waste an insane amount of time as soon as you want to properly configure a yubikey or set up a modern compilation stack (or update specific drivers or fixing the kernel). Compiling everything seems like an overkill, but remember it's unattended time, just start the upgrade before dinner twice a week and you'll be good to go. (Failure to compile in Gentoo are extremely rare, less than once a year)

The upside is deciding exactly which packets you want and which versions, and whenever you want to customize( or fix) a specific thing it's trivial.