The beauty is that you never fully install the Gentoo you want. It's about the journey and the friends we make along the way, not the destination.

I did Gentoo in my 20s when all I could afford was garbage computers. I enjoyed the experience — whether it did or not, it made me feel like I was getting the most out of whatever I had, and I learned SO much about Linux.

Sorry, everytime I see the gentoo logo, I see this:

Who's that pokemon!?!

Why does this image have a picture of Techmoan on it? I'm sure he'd love to know he's become a meme posterboy

Is that Techmoan?

"Yes, but after you do, it'll be blazing fast in the twenty minutes before you'll have to recompile due to software updates."

"So, you're saying that it would have been really efficient if all my eight cores weren't constantly pegged building software?"

"...Uh, yes."

"And that optimizing software for the native architecture could have enabled power savings, if those machines weren't all burning oceans of kilowatt hours building the same software over and over again redundantly?"

"Ah..."

That's an optimistic timeframe if you want to use kde and firefox.

I'm guessing this guy is still performing the demonstration tutorial that he started in 1999

https://github.com/oddlama/gentoo-install

What is gentoo?

I just installed Gentoo in less than a dozen minutes (and with just one command). (... Though, a gentoo install is never "done".)

::: spoiler how in the...

digit 20251229 tyson mx /home/digit % time sudo brl fetch -n timetoo gentoo
[sudo] password for digit:
[ 1/16 (  6%)] Determining name
* Using timetoo
[ 2/16 ( 12%)] Determining CPU architecture
* Using x86_64
[ 3/16 ( 18%)] Determining release
* Using rolling
[ 4/16 ( 25%)] Determining mirror
* Checking bedrock.conf [brl-fetch-mirror] items
[\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\] 100%
* Fast filtering 286 to top 10
[\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\] 100%
* Finding fastest mirror from 10
[\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\] 100%
* Using http://ftp.fau.de/gentoo
[ 5/16 ( 31%)] Making bootstrap directory structure
[ 6/16 ( 37%)] Finding bootstrap software
group_flavor: amd64
openrc
[ 7/16 ( 43%)] Downloading bootstrap software
Looking for file matching: ^stage3-amd64-openrc-[^.]*[.]tar[.]\(xz\|bz2\)$
at: http://ftp.fau.de/gentoo/releases/amd64/autobuilds/current-stage3-amd64-openrc/
found: stage3-amd64-openrc-20251228T163057Z.tar.xz
Downloading http://ftp.fau.de/gentoo/releases/amd64/autobuilds/current-stage3-amd64-openrc//stage3-amd64-openrc-20251228T163057Z.tar.xz.DIGESTS
  % Total    % Received % Xferd  Average Speed   Time    Time     Time  Current
                                 Dload  Upload   Total   Spent    Left  Speed
100  1352  100  1352    0     0   4684      0 --:--:-- --:--:-- --:--:--  4694
Downloading http://ftp.fau.de/gentoo/releases/amd64/autobuilds/current-stage3-amd64-openrc//stage3-amd64-openrc-20251228T163057Z.tar.xz
  % Total    % Received % Xferd  Average Speed   Time    Time     Time  Current
                                 Dload  Upload   Total   Spent    Left  Speed
100  250M  100  250M    0     0  1376k      0  0:03:06  0:03:06 --:--:-- 1189k
[ 8/16 ( 50%)] Preparing bootstrap software
[\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\] 100%
[ 9/16 ( 56%)] Running bootstrap software
[\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\] 100%
[10/16 ( 62%)] Configuring
!!! Section 'gentoo' in repos.conf has location attribute set to nonexistent directory: '/var/db/repos/gentoo'
!!! Invalid Repository Location (not a dir): '/var/db/repos/gentoo'
 * PGP verification method: gemato
 * Fetching most recent snapshot ...
 * Trying to retrieve 20251228 snapshot from http://ftp.fau.de/gentoo ...
 * Fetching file gentoo-20251228.tar.xz.md5sum ...
/var/tmp/emerge-webrsync.reeo1M/gentoo-20251228.tar.xz.md5sum                   100%[======================================================================================================================================================================================================>]      57  --.-KB/s    in 0s
2025-12-29 17:07:38 URL:http://ftp.fau.de/gentoo/snapshots/gentoo-20251228.tar.xz.md5sum [57/57] -> "/var/tmp/emerge-webrsync.reeo1M/gentoo-20251228.tar.xz.md5sum" [1]
 * Fetching file gentoo-20251228.tar.xz.gpgsig ...
/var/tmp/emerge-webrsync.reeo1M/gentoo-20251228.tar.xz.gpgsig                   100%[======================================================================================================================================================================================================>]    1000  --.-KB/s    in 0s
2025-12-29 17:07:39 URL:http://ftp.fau.de/gentoo/snapshots/gentoo-20251228.tar.xz.gpgsig [1000/1000] -> "/var/tmp/emerge-webrsync.reeo1M/gentoo-20251228.tar.xz.gpgsig" [1]
 * Fetching file gentoo-20251228.tar.xz ...
/var/tmp/emerge-webrsync.reeo1M/gentoo-20251228.tar.xz                          100%[======================================================================================================================================================================================================>]  45.76M  1.35MB/s    in 35s
2025-12-29 17:08:15 URL:http://ftp.fau.de/gentoo/snapshots/gentoo-20251228.tar.xz [47983992/47983992] -> "/var/tmp/emerge-webrsync.reeo1M/gentoo-20251228.tar.xz" [1]
 * Checking digest ...
 * Checking signature with gemato ...
[   INFO] Refreshing keys...
[   INFO] Keys refreshed.
[   INFO] File /var/tmp/emerge-webrsync.reeo1M/gentoo-20251228.tar.xz verified successfully against the signature in /var/tmp/emerge-webrsync.reeo1M/gentoo-20251228.tar.xz.gpgsig:
[   INFO] - status: OpenPGPSignatureStatus.GOOD
[   INFO] - valid: True, trusted: True
[   INFO] - primary key: DCD05B71EAB94199527F44ACDB6B8C1F96D8BF6D
[   INFO] - subkey: E1D6ABB63BFCFB4BA02FDF1CEC590EEAC9189250
[   INFO] - timestamp: 2025-12-29 01:06:30 UTC
 * Getting snapshot timestamp ...
 * Extracting 'gentoo-20251228.tar.xz' ...
 * Using rsync to refresh '/var/db/repos/gentoo' ...

Number of files: 155,780 (reg: 128,249, dir: 27,531)
Number of created files: 155,779 (reg: 128,249, dir: 27,530)
Number of deleted files: 0
Number of regular files transferred: 128,249
Total file size: 236.44M bytes
Total transferred file size: 236.44M bytes
Literal data: 236.44M bytes
Matched data: 0 bytes
File list size: 3.60M
File list generation time: 0.001 seconds
File list transfer time: 0.000 seconds
Total bytes sent: 120.70M
Total bytes received: 2.56M

sent 120.70M bytes  received 2.56M bytes  7.47M bytes/sec
total size is 236.44M  speedup is 1.92

Performing Global Updates
(Could take a couple of minutes if you have a lot of binary packages.)



 * IMPORTANT: 18 news items need reading for repository 'gentoo'.
 * Use eselect news read to view new items.

[11/16 ( 68%)] Setting locale
Found 1 locale declaration in '/etc/locale.gen'.
Compiling 2 locales with 2 workers ...
[1/2] Compiling locale: C.UTF-8
[2/2] Compiling locale: en_GB.UTF-8
Waiting for active workers to finish their jobs ...
The location of the archive shall be '/usr/lib/locale/locale-archive'.
Adding 2 locales to the locale archive ...
Successfully installed an archive containing 2 locales, of 2.93 MiB in size.
[12/16 ( 75%)] Cleaning up
[13/16 ( 81%)] Importing users and groups
[14/16 ( 87%)] Preparing symlinks
[15/16 ( 93%)] Showing
[16/16 (100%)] Enabling
* Successfully fetched a new gentoo stratum with name timetoo

________________________________________________________
Executed in  683.06 secs      fish           external
   usr time   90.03 millis    1.33 millis   88.71 millis
   sys time  182.29 millis    0.55 millis  181.74 millis

https://youtu.be/VjGSMUep6_4

I can do an evening

How to install gentoo in only 3 weeks