General :: Any Alternative Source Distro To Gentoo Without Space Taken Up By /user / Portage?

I sort of asked this question in the arch linux forums since I was interested in arch but I still have yet to get a response (maybe it's too early).I wan't something like gentoo but without taking up unnecessary space like gentoo's portage does (/usr/portage/). I find that to be a serious flaw with gentoo. Yes you can use squashfs-unionfs to help but it requires some work especially when something goes wrong with portage.I was thinking about arch but can you use it completely as a source based distro? Some people seem to have said it requires scripting and some work from the user. I wan't something that'll do it for me so I can set it and forget it.

I heard about source mage linux and exherbo but I'm not sure what to think. I'm thinking about trying arch linux and source mage but perhaps there's other distro's I don't know about. I'd really like some suggestions.