Portage is the Really Cool Package Manager that gentoo uses that automaticaly downloads all dependencies, and complies them from the source for your system.

I doubt that gentoo would really be much benefit on the empeg however, as its compilation is already optimized for its arm processor. The nice think about using gentoo on an recent intel box is that you get binaries that are complied and optimized for your specific processor, and not a 386. Installing gentoo is however the Thing To Do these days, so if you need to prove your geek-superiority, we'd all be impressed if you got it to work on an empeg.

Matthew