Linux is all about choice, isn't it - KDE, Gnome, Flux, IceWM, even no X at all, its whatever "floats your boat" !!.
Exactly, which is why I love Gentoo. You go through the steps to get a working base system, and then can decide what programs you want. You don't have to take RH's, Mandrake's, Suse's, or Mr. Volkerding's defaults if you don't want to.

For the fun of it I will emerge OpenOffice source and post the result here when done.
Cool! Can you post your processor speed and amount of RAM too, so we can get an idea of what you're working with?

Hopefully it won't take the rest of the week

/Edit: Just checked your profile. DAAAAAAMN!

Thermy XaserIII, Asus PC-DL mobo, 2 x 2.66 Xeon CPU's, 1gb DDR RAM, FX5700 Ultra gfx card, dual 120gb SATA HDD's, Lite-on DVD burner, Lite-on CD Burner/DVD player combo (Gentoo desktop) / P4 2.6 celeron, 1gb RAM, 40/80gb HDD's - (Gentoo - server)