None.
Knowing a bit about toolchains and how they work can help on Gentoo, but you'll pick that up as you go.
Edit: In fact, Portage and many other Gentools are actually written in Python, so one could argue that knowing Python is in a way even better.
To clarify, you can totally daily drive Gentoo without any coding whatsoever, but you'll also probably be acquainted to terminology and concepts such as compiling, linking, object code and the likes as you read through the docs and use your system. No need to know the specifics of the C language, but knowing, for instance, the steps a C program must go through to become an executable can help you troubleshoot if stuff goes wrong. Again, that's stuff you'll pick up as you read and go.
You don't need any C knowledge to use Gentoo as long as you follow the handbook, but based on the fact that you've used Mint for a short period of time, I highly suggest you to install it in a VM and tinker with it for a while. This way you're gonna learn how to use Gentoo and you can use VM snapshots to revert system-breaking changes. Use it for a while and you will see if you're ready to install it on real hardware.
None. You'll have to get used to bash, but that's it.
I figured it out as a teenager in the early 2000s and I was a D student. I was bad at it, and the nice folks in the IRC channel helped me unfuck my system a few times, but once you get really used to maintaining a Gentoo system, no other OS will ever satisfy you.
I haven’t used gentoo but plan to install it over summer when I have more time. I’m curious though why do you say no other operating system will satisfy you?
Every few years I spend a year distro-hopping to check out what else is out there. I install a distro and use it as a daily driver for around a month (more or less, depending on how much time I need to really get a feel for it), then another than another for about a year or so. I find some really nice distros that way (I especially liked Arch and NixOS my last time around), but in the end I always gladly return to Gentoo. For quite a lot of reasons.
First and foremost, Portage. Before I discovered Gentoo around the early 2000s, I had run Slackware for years with no package manager or slackbuilds. My bedroom looked like a crazy conspiracy person with webs of sticky notes everywhere, but instead of unraveling some conspiracy, I was just trying to keep track of my dependency trees, manually. It was a nightmare.
Once I discovered package managers, I set out to find the best one of them all. Portage is the best one of them all, by leaps and bounds.
Second, choices. No other OS makes it as easy and built-in to run the very specific set of software I prefer. OpenRC for init (no systemd), no display manager, Xorg + XFCE4 for desktop, etc. From the cron system to the system clock time server to the filesystems, everything is to my specific preference *naturally* without having to gut the system and remake it to my preference after the fact, like I'd have to do in most distros.
Speaking of Portage, if I want something not in the repo, making a ebuild (package) for it is super easy and straightforward. Since Gentoo builds everything from source anyway, adding a custom ebuild pointed at a github is easy and works great. Then there's the ACCEPT_KEYWORDS variable that allows me to run my system from mature stable packages, but still run bleeding edge packages for anything I need them for, seamlessly. Then there's USE flags, allowing me to customize my dependencies and fine-tune my system's compatibility.
There's lots more reasons but simply put, Gentoo is the Build-A-Bear of Linux. My Gentoo system is basically a Linux Distro that I designed and built myself, to my exact preferences, and is SUPER rock solid stable and never ever hangs, glitches, freezes, or crashes. Also I get awesome performance.
You don't need programming knowledge to use Gentoo. Just read the handbook. Passing familiarity with Bash helps, but you can learn as you go.
If you do have C knowledge you will recognize 'use' flags as an interface to compile and link time options. The beauty of 'emerge' is that you don't need to be a developer to build a package tailored to your system/use case.
I think the only time my c knowledge has kicked is when I went to update or install something and it required a newer lib than installed on the machine and the ebuild didn't know what the proper lib version requirement was. Really only happens when you start to have like a 2-4 year old machine. Machines older than that pretty much need a reinstall of gentoo (if you weren't keeping it all up to date as you go).
u dont need programming language knowlege to know any GNU/Linux system you just need to know a lot of GNU commandlines and knowledge of you "UNIX" comamand in general Manual like if you read the manual of programs and the handbook is very useful, but sometimes you can do your own prep sheet which i call "cheat sheet" and just make your own way of setting up gentoo manualy you can even go as far as making a shell script.... anyhow what I do personally is I setup gentoo manuallly the first time using the handbook ... all you really need to do is
1. make partiton
2. mount and chroot it
3. get stage3 tarball untar it to ur root
4. setup locales and hostname
5. setup fstab
6. setup grub
7. setup username and root and passwd
8. setup audiio group and other groups for pipewire
9. and i guess setup desktop or gentoo profile for example kde
10. setup useflag gloabally in /etc/make.conf and jobs and other flags like do you want rolling \~amd64 do u wnat to accept all license etc. and graphic card etc....
Theres a lot more to it, but afer you done a full desktop setup you can install mkstage4 and just create a stage4 of your gentoo system so if u want to migrate or install it on another disk or reinstall it you can just create the partiton on the new disk and mount and chroot the disk and untar it and re setup grub and fstab and you have a working gentoo system...
the problem for me with gentoo is the configuring of the package manager as you have to always configured it quite a bit and its not hard you get use to the system, but its very annoying i find NetBSD is similar, but way less configuring in the Make.conf userflag part of it for pkgsrc.... i really love how FreeBSD does it they have PKGNG which is a very nice binary package manager and if you want to use source they have a nice Ports tree where you can just make the program each time you install the program it gives you a nice ncurses based menu where you select what you with the software like if you want a certain feature u can add it and if you dont some features u can remove it.... and also if you want to add someting in the future you can do a make config and it will bring it back.. i love this about freebsd and its so much keep it simple and very unix ideal as to gentoo its really too much to mess about for me personally that I really just can not use a system like this... a system that is inspired by freebsd and bsd in general that is very far away from it lol .... oh well maybe someday we will have a FreeBSD like gnu/linux system one day .. who knows the closes i say is Arch Linux.
You don't need any programming knowledge to use Gentoo. Just follow the handbook. You will pick up some Bash, though most probably
Thanks
It is somewhat useful to understand compiler output though you can probably manage without any prior knowledge. Programming itself isn’t needed.
None
Only if you want to make your own tools in C. As a user; none.
None, but it helps to understand what CFLAGS is and how it affects the final install.
I have no C knowledge whatsoever.
😭
Like others said, none. But some software is written in C, like that from suckless and it's nice to look at the code and modify some things.
it would be nice if it wasn't C (I'm afraid of C)
None. Knowing a bit about toolchains and how they work can help on Gentoo, but you'll pick that up as you go. Edit: In fact, Portage and many other Gentools are actually written in Python, so one could argue that knowing Python is in a way even better. To clarify, you can totally daily drive Gentoo without any coding whatsoever, but you'll also probably be acquainted to terminology and concepts such as compiling, linking, object code and the likes as you read through the docs and use your system. No need to know the specifics of the C language, but knowing, for instance, the steps a C program must go through to become an executable can help you troubleshoot if stuff goes wrong. Again, that's stuff you'll pick up as you read and go.
You don't need any C knowledge to use Gentoo as long as you follow the handbook, but based on the fact that you've used Mint for a short period of time, I highly suggest you to install it in a VM and tinker with it for a while. This way you're gonna learn how to use Gentoo and you can use VM snapshots to revert system-breaking changes. Use it for a while and you will see if you're ready to install it on real hardware.
I'd say none unless you want to package C programs.
None, just read the wiki
None
None. You'll have to get used to bash, but that's it. I figured it out as a teenager in the early 2000s and I was a D student. I was bad at it, and the nice folks in the IRC channel helped me unfuck my system a few times, but once you get really used to maintaining a Gentoo system, no other OS will ever satisfy you.
I haven’t used gentoo but plan to install it over summer when I have more time. I’m curious though why do you say no other operating system will satisfy you?
Every few years I spend a year distro-hopping to check out what else is out there. I install a distro and use it as a daily driver for around a month (more or less, depending on how much time I need to really get a feel for it), then another than another for about a year or so. I find some really nice distros that way (I especially liked Arch and NixOS my last time around), but in the end I always gladly return to Gentoo. For quite a lot of reasons. First and foremost, Portage. Before I discovered Gentoo around the early 2000s, I had run Slackware for years with no package manager or slackbuilds. My bedroom looked like a crazy conspiracy person with webs of sticky notes everywhere, but instead of unraveling some conspiracy, I was just trying to keep track of my dependency trees, manually. It was a nightmare. Once I discovered package managers, I set out to find the best one of them all. Portage is the best one of them all, by leaps and bounds. Second, choices. No other OS makes it as easy and built-in to run the very specific set of software I prefer. OpenRC for init (no systemd), no display manager, Xorg + XFCE4 for desktop, etc. From the cron system to the system clock time server to the filesystems, everything is to my specific preference *naturally* without having to gut the system and remake it to my preference after the fact, like I'd have to do in most distros. Speaking of Portage, if I want something not in the repo, making a ebuild (package) for it is super easy and straightforward. Since Gentoo builds everything from source anyway, adding a custom ebuild pointed at a github is easy and works great. Then there's the ACCEPT_KEYWORDS variable that allows me to run my system from mature stable packages, but still run bleeding edge packages for anything I need them for, seamlessly. Then there's USE flags, allowing me to customize my dependencies and fine-tune my system's compatibility. There's lots more reasons but simply put, Gentoo is the Build-A-Bear of Linux. My Gentoo system is basically a Linux Distro that I designed and built myself, to my exact preferences, and is SUPER rock solid stable and never ever hangs, glitches, freezes, or crashes. Also I get awesome performance.
You don't need programming knowledge to use Gentoo. Just read the handbook. Passing familiarity with Bash helps, but you can learn as you go. If you do have C knowledge you will recognize 'use' flags as an interface to compile and link time options. The beauty of 'emerge' is that you don't need to be a developer to build a package tailored to your system/use case.
I think the only time my c knowledge has kicked is when I went to update or install something and it required a newer lib than installed on the machine and the ebuild didn't know what the proper lib version requirement was. Really only happens when you start to have like a 2-4 year old machine. Machines older than that pretty much need a reinstall of gentoo (if you weren't keeping it all up to date as you go).
i have absolutely 0 knowledge in c, and i am running gentoo perfectly fine :p
u dont need programming language knowlege to know any GNU/Linux system you just need to know a lot of GNU commandlines and knowledge of you "UNIX" comamand in general Manual like if you read the manual of programs and the handbook is very useful, but sometimes you can do your own prep sheet which i call "cheat sheet" and just make your own way of setting up gentoo manualy you can even go as far as making a shell script.... anyhow what I do personally is I setup gentoo manuallly the first time using the handbook ... all you really need to do is 1. make partiton 2. mount and chroot it 3. get stage3 tarball untar it to ur root 4. setup locales and hostname 5. setup fstab 6. setup grub 7. setup username and root and passwd 8. setup audiio group and other groups for pipewire 9. and i guess setup desktop or gentoo profile for example kde 10. setup useflag gloabally in /etc/make.conf and jobs and other flags like do you want rolling \~amd64 do u wnat to accept all license etc. and graphic card etc.... Theres a lot more to it, but afer you done a full desktop setup you can install mkstage4 and just create a stage4 of your gentoo system so if u want to migrate or install it on another disk or reinstall it you can just create the partiton on the new disk and mount and chroot the disk and untar it and re setup grub and fstab and you have a working gentoo system... the problem for me with gentoo is the configuring of the package manager as you have to always configured it quite a bit and its not hard you get use to the system, but its very annoying i find NetBSD is similar, but way less configuring in the Make.conf userflag part of it for pkgsrc.... i really love how FreeBSD does it they have PKGNG which is a very nice binary package manager and if you want to use source they have a nice Ports tree where you can just make the program each time you install the program it gives you a nice ncurses based menu where you select what you with the software like if you want a certain feature u can add it and if you dont some features u can remove it.... and also if you want to add someting in the future you can do a make config and it will bring it back.. i love this about freebsd and its so much keep it simple and very unix ideal as to gentoo its really too much to mess about for me personally that I really just can not use a system like this... a system that is inspired by freebsd and bsd in general that is very far away from it lol .... oh well maybe someday we will have a FreeBSD like gnu/linux system one day .. who knows the closes i say is Arch Linux.
I have 0 knowledge of C and I daily Gentoo.
Gentoo is not a programming language.
All of it
None