Say whaaaaat? Gentoo's Handbook for installation is aces. The first time I ever installed a source-based distro on my own was with that, stage1 to stage3, and it not only taught me a great deal, but I didn't run into any show-stopper issues.

In fact, every time I try Arch I'm disappointed by it compared to Gentoo. Different strokes, different folks I guess.

I should clarify. The thing I take issue with is the Install Guide for Gentoo AMD64.

It does things in ways that doesn't facilitate educating and it orders the sections in ways that seem illogical to me. The wiki itself didn't really lend itself to me the way the Arch wiki did, but then again, I have very specific problems (my wifi adapter is annoying due to drivers being proprietary only). 

About the only useful thing I learned was that OpenRC exists from installing Gentoo. Everything else I learned is easily automated or similar.

I did automate the kernel compiling because I have no idea or care about what I'd need or want to change regarding the kernel settings, so I can't see why I'd take the time to do it manually. I may one day, but I want a usable system before I bother with those types of things.

Sorry, I still don't see it. Why even bother with a source-based distro for installation convenience or to just use a "stock" setup? (That's so pointless I don't even). I wouldn't ever bother with a distro like Arch or Gentoo if I *wasn't* going to customize the kernel, configure options for packages, and so on. Might as well just use a binary distro at that point.

But I can see being annoyed with Gentoo based on the installation process. Arch has a more streamlined base installer, while Gentoo presumes that you want to do practically everything yourself. It's an apples or oranges comparison, frankly, but I don't think Arch does "better", it just holds your hand a bit more on the presumption that you don't want to customize things as much as makes a source-based distro really shine.

There are multiple reasons I can think of for using Arch when I don't want to customize things.

The primary reason is so I can learn so I can eventually customize things. Like, you gotta learn things in steps imo. i.e. first learn how to install the OS yourself. Even if it's automated, you learned more than you knew before. Then start looking into why you'd customize things. Then actually customize them. 

The only reasons I've found for myself to customize things is so I can use the software I want to use. But I haven't got very far with that.

Gentoo doesn't really make the first step easy. Part of a distro is learning what's available for it and what it does differently that makes you want to use it over other distros. In the end, it's all Linux, so that is what matters since you could technically get anything on any distro. 

For example, now I want to use OpenRC in place of SystemD. So I didn't come away from trying Gentoo completely empty handed. But I still need to learn more about it and why I'd want to use one over the other.

If I can't get into the system to see the benefits of why it does the things it does, I may as well not have bothered trying to use it. 

It just seems to me like you could achieve the same learning experiences in any old distro that you'll get from using Arch this way. But then as long as it encourages you in some way, it's better than sticking in a rut, I guess.