I would like to practice installing Gentoo from scratch since I like the idea of the distro, but I’m quite new to Linux at all and only had experience with Debian. I suppose my very basic knowledge of terminal isn’t enough to install Gentoo, even with the handbook. So, what would you recommend to learn or practice before I actually try installing Gentoo? Also, any specific tips on installing Gentoo inside a VM?
They don’t still dump you into the kernel build configurator these days?
Not if you don’t want to. It’s an option outlined in the gentoo docs but for first time gentoo users they recommend just grabbing sys-kernel/gentoo-kernel-bin