> reading through the documentation and putting your distro together gives you way more insight into the inner workings which is invaluable for when it breaks.

I definitely feel that way about the core libraries/frameworks I'm building my applications/codebases on top of, so can relate!

But for my WM/desktop, I'm pretty happy to a) not know it's innermost workings, and b) just have it not break in the first place! :-)

I guess we can each have our own yak-shaving preferences. :-)