Link for the curious and/or lazy: https://mastodon.art/@socksandpuppets

Is this the new "just google it"?

Gentoo itself is "just" a very solid distro with lots of flexibility due to being source-based (most distros just deliver the resulting binaries), so if you're the kind of person that would customize the things Gentoo exposes, Gentoo makes it easier than it would be on Debian or Arch. If not, it's an added complexity for not much benefit.

The Gentoo installation guide famously doesn't shy away from explaining what needs to be done, it isn't just a series of step-by-step instructions. For this reason it's a great way to start learning this stuff. Even if it won't explain everything completely, it will surely point at the right direction.

The combat is... unusual. Yes, "unusual" would be the best word. Not exactly great but it has its nice quirks. Things like traps and magic really shine. Melee is workable, but nothing amazing. It can be played in coop making traps and magic even more interesting, but it's perfectly viable as a solo experience (that's how I played it 90% of the time).

In terms of the polish I'd compare it to how the Gothic games felt back in the day. Low budget but with lots of heart. In addition to that, at first it felt weirdly empty, especially compared to the behemoths like The Elder Scrolls, but in the end I don't mind having only these 8-10 dungeons per map (there are 4 maps in the base game with 2 more in the DLC) with each one being memorable. Doubly so considering the limited resources of this developer.

Not exactly linear, but the progress is apparent. There are no character levels. Instead you improve your equipment, learn new food recipes (powerful and very important buffs) and learn new skills. The various types of magic are particularly interesting. One of my favorite magic systems in games ever.

Outward! A relatively low budget but very enjoyable action RPG with surprisingly non-annoying and actually fun survival elements.
Whenever you die in Outward, a random "defeat scenario" occurs. Sometimes you wake up rescued by a stranger, sometimes someone brought you to the nearby town. And sometimes you wake up as a prisoner in a local thug camp and need to figure out how to escape.

Emacs is more like a runtime for many smaller programs doing all these things, with common way for them to talk to each other. It's closer to Java than to Facebook.

For some strange reason nobody mentioned Tunic yet. Definitely take a look at it!

Why are you implying using Gentoo only makes sense to learn Linux?

Not if it's them that need to communicate with me.

I've bounced from it 3 or 4 times. Once I got past the start, I've had a blast, easily in my top 20 games of all time. Give it a try!

Rather than relying on 3rd parties to make GUI’s the original developers should take the responsibility to provide a solid user interface.

The original developers are volunteers that made a tool they needed and shared it with the others of their own volition. They may or they may not make the effort to add anything extra on top of it. Demanding it from them is just unreasonable. If you don't like their gift to the community, you can provide your own, with blackjack and GUIs.