A scratch off the Bucketlist. After alot of pain, I finally installed Gentoo Linux.

I can say that I have completed a major achievement and successfully installed Gentoo Linux (on hardware) for the first time.

This effort took me over a total of 5 days to achieve, due to the many failed attempts that I faced. Each attempt roughly was about 7 hours to do. The reason for the insane times is that I was working on legacy hardware. Trying to compile an entire kernel, desktop environment and tools on only 4 threads of a 2013 T430 Thinkpad really was a daunting process.

As for those who don’t understand the complexity of trying to build an entire operating system from a measly stage 3 tarball… Well it’s no walk in the park.

For any brave soul interested in tackling this challenge, the AMD64 Gentoo Handbook will be your best friend.

I would recommend all those that are either tinkerers or just real big Linux fans to partake on this journey. The amount of knowledge and experience that you will take away from this project will be invaluable.

{J.G}