# Gentoo Wiki

9 Hacker News commenters recommended Gentoo Wiki and 3 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 3 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** Long-running community wiki with detailed Gentoo and Linux instructions, often compared favorably with the Arch wiki. Critics point to a past hack that lost data and an unofficial backup gap.

## Why people recommend it

- Low-level Gentoo-specific information (2 comments): "Gentoo's speciality in my opinion, is that it contains some lower level information" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47022361)) "Gentoo wiki contains some stuff that Arch wiki doesn't." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47022200))
- Good resource, referenced repeatedly (5 comments): "the wiki was amazing and I referenced it repeatedly for other things" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47028071)) "20 years ago, I used Gentoo, and their wiki was the best." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47025736)) "the wiki was good, I even contributed to it at times" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47021989))
- Clean, uncluttered style (2 comments): "Arch and Gentoo wikis showcase this style well" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47413687)) "things feel less cluttered to me" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47022302))

## What people warn about

- Past hack and data loss (3 comments): "it was an unofficial wiki and so wasn't backed up properly" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47034627)) "which was indeed hacked and lost data iirc" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47027545)) "Gentoo Wiki once had a terrible data loss" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47022687))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [ArchWiki](https://hackerapproved.com/p/archwiki.md): 86 recommend
- [Anthropic documentation](https://hackerapproved.com/p/anthropic-documentation.md): 5 recommend
- [TypeScript Handbook](https://hackerapproved.com/p/typescript-handbook.md): 5 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Gentoo Wiki", https://hackerapproved.com/p/gentoo-wiki/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).