Long time gentoo advocate(/fanboy) here, and so, it stings a little to say this, but, there are ways to use gentoo that do not have you learn as much about your system as, say, e.g. CRUX, KISS/Carbs, LFS(?), starting with just a busybox and kernel, Exherbo, or even many ways of using slackware [and several other suggestions yet, but gotta cut the list short somewhere].
Gentoo’s very conveniently wrapped up with portage. So conveniently, you can be forgiven for lingering in the convenience and not venturing deeper into what the convenience wraps around. It’s not a thick opaque plastic wrap like some distros that try hard to lower the entry bar, but it is still convenient. … Conveniently availing advanced fidelity of choice over what you’re installing, conveniently managing complexity in simplicity, but ultimately a convenience trap still none the less. … Many Gentoo users look like uneducated yokels in flying saucers, compared to those who actually do compile their software themselves (they run make), rather than those who have emerge do it for them. [Or an even more extreme example, we’re like anyone using an LLM voice assistant.] As in: We’re not superior skilled savvy sysadmin, we just have better tools.
And why do the effort of learning to become better, when the machine does it for you.
But then, with gentoo, you do still have the choice. Gentoo is all about choice.
One can try say same for any distro, and that’s true, for all being (mostly) Free Software (“Opensource”) and so can study (freedom1) it to whatever depth your curiosity takes you, but, Arch does try take some of your choice away from you, not the freedom to study it, but in that it insists it have the freedom to bite you. [ Though, there be ways to mitigate that ]. Debian (or Devuan), Gentoo, Suse, and others, let you opt-in to the fast lane. Arch seem to be screaming “COME WITH US, FAST AS WE CAN!!!” and leaving little room to hear anything about taking arch to a slow lane.
It was mostly sarcastic suggestion, but as you said, you can hit the ground running with Gentoo nowadays very quickly, and go back and revisit every part of it and play around with it, and learn about everything later.
Long time gentoo advocate(/fanboy) here, and so, it stings a little to say this, but, there are ways to use gentoo that do not have you learn as much about your system as, say, e.g. CRUX, KISS/Carbs, LFS(?), starting with just a busybox and kernel, Exherbo, or even many ways of using slackware [and several other suggestions yet, but gotta cut the list short somewhere].
Gentoo’s very conveniently wrapped up with portage. So conveniently, you can be forgiven for lingering in the convenience and not venturing deeper into what the convenience wraps around. It’s not a thick opaque plastic wrap like some distros that try hard to lower the entry bar, but it is still convenient. … Conveniently availing advanced fidelity of choice over what you’re installing, conveniently managing complexity in simplicity, but ultimately a convenience trap still none the less. … Many Gentoo users look like uneducated yokels in flying saucers, compared to those who actually do compile their software themselves (they run
make), rather than those who have emerge do it for them. [Or an even more extreme example, we’re like anyone using an LLM voice assistant.] As in: We’re not superior skilled savvy sysadmin, we just have better tools.And why do the effort of learning to become better, when the machine does it for you.
But then, with gentoo, you do still have the choice. Gentoo is all about choice.
One can try say same for any distro, and that’s true, for all being (mostly) Free Software (“Opensource”) and so can study (freedom1) it to whatever depth your curiosity takes you, but, Arch does try take some of your choice away from you, not the freedom to study it, but in that it insists it have the freedom to bite you. [ Though, there be ways to mitigate that ]. Debian (or Devuan), Gentoo, Suse, and others, let you opt-in to the fast lane. Arch seem to be screaming “COME WITH US, FAST AS WE CAN!!!” and leaving little room to hear anything about taking arch to a slow lane.
It was mostly sarcastic suggestion, but as you said, you can hit the ground running with Gentoo nowadays very quickly, and go back and revisit every part of it and play around with it, and learn about everything later.