Gentoo is probably the most user hostile Linux distribution I can think of other than ones purposely austere for learning (LFS) or parody (Suicide Linux).
If Mac Ports requires that level of knowledge to be user friendly it’s no surprise they lost.
If Mac Ports requires that level of knowledge to be user friendly it’s no surprise they lost.
Most people will never need Gentoo or want to use it, but for those with either a need or a desire for a meta-distribution, Gentoo does a pretty good job. I don't think calling it "user hostile" is quite right.
I think it's been partially supplanted by other package managers now like Nix/NixOS and even (IMO) XBPS/Void, but Portage does an alright job.
By any other metric, I would consider it more user-friendly than average. For example, I was very favorably impressed when (not knowing what I was doing), I gave the command to uninstall libc, and after confirming that I really wanted to do that, I was allowed to.
The community feel was pretty good. Excellent documentation/wiki. And it was by far the best Linux education I could have ask for back in those days. I’m happy ...
It was a great learning experience nearly 20 years ago.
It's just not for you.
It's just not user friendly.
It was my first experience with linux in 2003, going through some 80 page wiki to get things configured and built. Learning how to configure an fstab file.
Hostile as in everything requires following a multipage guide of commands and manual configuration that often didn't quite work. Also when I asked on the forum I was told they didn't want more users, but more skilled users (I was 12).
So not really mouse clicky, more that basic functionality takes enormous effort to get working and the community at the time wasn't great.