Comment by djhworld
3 years ago
I followed a similar beginners journey, mandrake and then Gentoo.
Oddly at a very similar period in time (circa 2003/04). I've seen a bunch of posts recently reflecting on Gentoo and people saying they got started around 2003, was there some zeitgeist around the distro at that time?
As you can see on Distrowatch, it was the hype at the time. If you wanted to be source based, and pseudo-minimalist, there weren't many alternatives. Amongst them, Gentoo had the best documentation, and probably the friendliest forums.