Getting started with Gentoo

So you've decided you want to try Gentoo out. That's great, you're just few steps away from making your computer experience beautiful.
The following tutorial is for x86 architectures, which most PCs belong to.
Before we get started, you should know that the installation will take you 2-4 days until you get to a fully working graphical environment if you're doing it for a first time. (it's worth it)
Because there are already some damn good tutorials of how to install Gentoo, I'm not going to reinvent the wheel, but provide you with links to them, and write here only the things that need to be written. If you consider yourself to be an advanced user, and have at least basic linux skills, then you can just jump to the Gentoo Handbook link.

What do you need to get started?

• Basic unix knowledge. Just the basic commands for navigation and file management. If you don't have it, you can get it here. You don't even have to go through the whole tutorial, just the first 3 chapters are enough for this. You can try the tutorial on any linux/unix, if you have none, you can get Damn Small Linux and try it there. Or you can try it directly on Gentoo's installation cd.
  
• Gentoo Minimal Installation CD. It's 57MB and it has all the tools you need for the installation. You can get it from any of the following mirrors, located at releases/x86/2008.0/installcd/ directory. Download it and burn it.
  
• Internet connection. The installation consists of downloading source codes for the different parts of the OS, and building them on your computer one by one.
• Know your hardware. You should know what CPU your computer is having, how much RAM does it have, graphic card, general stuff like that.
  

What do you need to do?
Once you download and burn the installation CD, you will need to boot from it. Booting from it will take you to a non graphical Gentoo environment. Don't be afraid, if you haven't went through the tutorial I mentioned before, you can try it out now, on the cd's environment.

Now that we're here, you can continue with the
Gentoo Linux x86 Handbook
In there, you will find the whole process of installing Gentoo, as well as managing your system after the installation is done. Don't be afraid of its length. There's like half of it that that covers the installation process, and the other half is consisted of later administration. You can read the second part piece by piece, when you encounter the need to know the things that are written there. Even I haven't went through whole of it yet ;).

Tips during the installation:

• While in the non graphical Gentoo environment, you can switch screens by pressing Alt + any of the function keys(example: Alt+F2, Alt+F3). This can be useful if you want to read the handbook during the installation. You can have links(web browser) opened on the one screen and having the Handbook opened or google, irssi(irc client) on another screen to ask the guys from Gentoo's channel for help when needed, and working with the installation on other screen.
• Gentoo's irc channel is located at irc.freenode.net #gentoo.
• During the installation, you'll be given many choices to make. You should use google whenever you encounter things that you don't know what they are, and make the choice after you get the idea. Especially when configuring the kernel.
  
• You WILL encounter problems. At least 1 thing won't go as you expected it to. Don't give up, reread the explanation in the handbook, ask people on #gentoo, there's always a solution for everything.

That's it for now. If you have any questions or suggestions for the post, don't hesitate to leave a comment.

Good luck ;)