I agree that the Gentoo wiki is almost always better than the Arch wiki (and would recommend it to any user), but i really doubt installing complicated packages is remotely as hard as on Gentoo.

While i have never used Arch before, i did use Manjaro, and there stuff was always just install the package and be done. I never had to alter the Kernel config, and all program features were just there. I also had VMs on Manjaro, and i do not remember any manual configuration (though that was many years ago, so maybe i misremember).

Recently i wanted to encode a video in ffmpeg, but it didn’t work. After a bit of searching i found that the codec requires a use-flag to be set. Classic Gentoo moment.

It’s not that i dislike Gentoo. In fact i do not consider returning to Arch (but i might switch to NixOS if my Gentoo install breaks). But i wouldn’t switch to any other distro.
It’s just that Gentoo is configured in a way that is so minimal by default that even basic use-cases require changes in the Kernel config: systemd? Kernel config. Bluetooth? Kernel config. LUKS? Kernel config. Amdgpu? Yes, exactly. BTRFS? Yes. Blender? Yeah OK, that goes without kernel config.
And the worst about the Kernel config: You don’t know which values are set by default. You might just end up in nconfig realizing that the values were already set.

Then there is the instability in the distKernel (which i use). I think i started with Kernel 5.10LTS ish. Every upgrade went well until like 6.1 LTS, when Emerge complained about i think module ordering or something. It would not emerge a newer Kernel any more, which made me reset my Kernel config and redo it entirely because i thought Kernel 5 and 6 configs might be incompatible. That worked (somehow) until 6.6 LTS, which i wanted to install at version 6.6.6 LTS. But emerge complained it could not install it. I waited and ignored the update, and eventually got trough at version 6.6.20 or so. After that it refused to update again, which made me blacklist all non LTS kernels. I am now on 6.12 LTS, even though i am not a LTS guy, simply because i don’t want the hassle.

And still, after all of this effort for being minimal, it boots in like 20s, while Arch does it in like 3 or so. Gentoo hates me.

The problem with Gentoo is that you can’t install anything in a hurry.

Run VMs on Arch:

1. pacman -S virt-manager
2. Done.

Run VMs on Gentoo?

1. Read the Wiki
2. Find out which USE-Flags you will want
3. Fnd out the dependencies it’s based on (QEMU), read that Wiki entry too
4. See what USE-Flags you want
5. See what Kernel options are needed. Recompile Kernel if changes were necessary.
6. emerge -av app-emulation/virt-manager
7. See if you have read the Wikis of all dependencies.
8. Install.
9. Read the dependencies wikis for how to set things up.
10. Done

Yes, this is an extreme example, but many large packages are a bit like this.
That’s why you will tripple-check if you really need sonething before installing it on Gentoo, or you are like me and install Boxes in a Flatpak instead.

Personally i like Gentoo more than Arch because of all the buttons and knobs, and once it’s set up it does not need more time than Arch, but installing stuff is sometimes hard.