[bombcar]

Yeah, that and the Gentoo wiki have gotten me past most major hurdles.

I think another answer is that much of what is covered by the HowTos is now built into the distros themselves; there's no need to learn X Y and Z if you want to do T, as you just select the "LAMP STACK" option in the distro installer.

[jrmg]

Yeah - I just set up Gentoo for the first time, and the wiki is _excellent_.

I had this preconception that Gentoo was ‘complicated’, but the excellent documentation has made everything easy (and I’m coming round to the opinion that Gentoo is actually easier because how it works is so ‘transparent’).

[bombcar]

I found Gentoo much easier if you knew you were going to stray from the beaten path (e.g, custom kernel, weird library choices, etc).

It's been surprisingly stable for me considering everything I throw at it, and much of what I learned has helped diagnose issues with other distros.

[herewulf]

I've found the Gentoo wiki very helpful even back when I was running no Gentoo systems.