So... I can enable binaries if available, but if they aren't available, it builds the package from source on the spot like how people classically think Gentoo does.

The install process was a bit head-scratchy just because I'm new to Gentoo but overall, this shares a ton of parallels to installing Archlinux without an install script or helper.

The cool thing about gentoo is that you almost have to learn about how the system works to install it to start with. Your choices, and they have to be your choices, this is a very 'elect' system - make the system what it is, literally. There's nothing in the pot that you don't throw into it. It has a few defaults and some config files are set up well enough for any standard desktop, but for the most part, you're about to find out how OpenRC, Wayland, SDDM and KDE work together.

It's flexible. I didn't make brand new filesystems or nuke my old drive. I blanked the partitions I had then adapted them to Gentoo. I had an efi/main partition/swap setup already and it was easy to translate that to Gentoo's layout of... the same layout lmao.

That's one of the cool things, here. Gentoo's guide doesn't MAKE you do anything. There are so many "ifs". It's extremely flexible and you wrap your system around it every step of the way. Everything fits and there's a "oh, you have X? Then do Y" for everything, seems like.

Where are we right now?

So far so good, and no real errors to back up and deal with, believe it or not. Things have been pretty buttery, but I have had to go looking for clarification on a few things like make flags and such.

In the future, as I think most people running Gentoo do... it would probably be smart of me to copy these files for use if I ever have to restore this system from scratch. Having it all canned would save on time.