[chiefsucker]

> Didn't really occur to me that the installation experience is completely different these days, but that makes sense.

I used Gentoo as my main OS for multiple years over a decade ago, installed it a couple of times, and helped with the localization of several documents, but I still remember the installation being basically the same as it is now.

I’m honestly wondering what is meant by this statement?

[arantius]

In the past you used to be able to choose from various stages, which went down to _very low_ level. Now you must start from stage 3, which is already a (slim, but) fully bootstrapped/running installation, which you customize from there.