You're viewing a single thread.
My first real experience with installing/running Linux on my own machine back in the day was with Gentoo. My experience was basically the same as Arch guy there, except with the added step of compiling every single component from source. On a Celeron equipped laptop. Nobody warned me about that part.
It took fucking ages. I was stuck in textmode land with Matrix code flying up the screen for like three fucking days, before I even got to a shell prompt.
I gave up. I just run Debian now.
After you've done Linux from scratch, Gentoo is a walk in the park
I should maybe attempt that at some point.
But knowing my brain, I'll just forget everything 0.4 seconds after I am done.
I did mine closer to 20 years ago, I'm guessing things might have changed a bit since then. That said I ran Gentoo on an IBM ThinkPad for about five years before switching to OSX.
Permanently Deleted
I remember back in 2000s Gentoo was a distro you got cred for being able to install.
I was in an IT school around 2012. I thought I was the only one using Linux besides Windows (predominantely though). I wasn't. He was daily-driving Gentoo where most of the students haven't even heard of Linux the kernel before confronted with a bash shell in a course.
I'd say in 2000 only the nerdiest people, academics or professionals knew the difference between say Red Hat or Gentoo at least here in Central Europe. Windows 95 (and 98) came pre-installed on every OEM PC and the best windows to that date (2000) would come out that year and I guess everybody was hyped for XP. Saying you are compiling your kernel and software yourself with GCC would have only got you puzzled faces instead of kudos in 2000 here.