Transitioning from Arch Linux to Gentoo

08-07-2025

I've been using Arch Linux on and off for the past 2 years now, and while it is a great operating system, with how I treat my installs I've realized that I have to reinstall every 2-3 months at most if I want to keep it stable. Along with this I figured that it's time for a change from the (sometimes, not always) toxic Arch "RTFM" mentality. I've head of the Gentoo community being a lot more friendly, as well as the wiki being easier to understand. With this Gentoo is typically considered "harder" than Arch, so it was the next step for me.

Overall, Gentoo was definitly easier for me to install than Arch. I followed the Gentoo install guide and has almost no issues. The only big issue I had was on the "Installing the Bootloader" step. I had configured the kernel image for EFIStub boot, but installed GRUB, which called issues (as well as deleted the kernel at one point beacuse I didn't have the partition mounted). Beyond that I used the device UUIDs, instead of the partition UUIDs, which is an important difference. And lastly, of course, I forgot WLAN networking, so I had to wire in to my AP for a bit while I waited for NetworkManager to install.

After I got a working install it was mostly smooth sailing. The learning curve isn't that hard, and I definitly learned a lot more about my system just from getting started with Gentoo. The wiki is super friendly to use, and it feels more stable than Arch. I've just started learning about ebuilds and they are AWESOME, they make it so much easier to keep all you packages managed through portage.

Overall, Gentoo is definitly not a beginner distro, but thats fine if you know what you're doing. I'm gonna continue to daily drive it and keep this page updated on my experience. Also rice pics coming soon!