I've been using Gentoo for 10 years and have been configing, building, and installing (and occasionally patching) kernels for that entire time. For me it has go

I've been using Gentoo for 10 years and have been configing, building, and installing (and occasionally patching) kernels for that entire time. For me it has gotten much easier now that you can use an efi stub kernel to install. That said I agree that it can be too much because most distros don't make it easy and 'hello world' is often the hardest program you will ever write.