My brother is using Gentoo Linux and very much likes it. I was kinda effected by him and wondered what is it like using this distro. A distro where you have to compile almost everything for your hardware. At the same time it is very much flexible and you can configure all stuff the way you like. It is also noteable that it is available to almost all platforms.

So I give it a shot, I installed it on my IBM Thinkpad R60, the Gentoo base can be installed within 30-45min, the rest may take all night long... I must say it was hard to install for a first time, I printed out the handbook for that. After my 4th install, and my numerous calls and chats to my brother and visits to gentoo-wiki.com I could install whatever I want including my drivers.

I should say - it was very informative and a very good experience. I learnt a lot about how linux works and all. All aside I believe it is very good for a education purposes or people who can afford time and efforts. I believe it can not go to production/business line. You can point me to a number of businesses running Gentoo but if we look generally no serious business would like to have Gentoo in their server room. Why? First of all installation takes time and efforts, secondly emergency cases can and do happen then it is very hard to get back control. The main purpose of Gentoo is to polish and compile everything according to your hardware in order to get the best performance. But since the hardware costs are very cheap these days, well at least it is cheaper when we think of possible down times and their resolutions.