Is Gentoo a nightmare to the experienced users?

gentoo

This post has stirred in the slashdot about whether Gentoo installation is so painful even for a savvy Linux user. Ok, let’s replay the his Gentoo journey:

Mini LiveCD vs LiveCD

The author complains that the miniLiveCD is not adequate for the installation, so he had to download/burn the liveCD again. But later, he grabbed the snapshot of portage, and compile almost everything from the scratch, — the troublemaker, zlib is in system metaclass, — so why bother to go for the LiveCD? Eventually, the liveCD is used in the 2nd run.

GUI vs CLI

I strongly suggest the CLI interface for either savvy user or newbies. You have more control of the packages, configurations.

Auto configuration

I have never used Debian or Ubuntu, just curious how Debian users update/rebuild the kernels. Does Debian is powered by smart tools to probe the devices automatically? If so, why Gentoo could not adapt it as well?

RTFM

I know quite a few Linux users hate this word. But it really works. Gentoo enjoys the reputation to have the high quality documentation, wiki and forum. You can easily find a solution in Gentoo’s community than Google.