FWIW, last night I tried booting the Live DVD for Gentoo. It booted up but the touchpad did not work whereas the keyboard did. AFAIK these are the same USB device (the Macbook does not have a PS/2 keyboard). As such when it started X and KDE, the GUI was not usable. However the first virtual console did work.

This may be helpful, although you're using the live DVD rather than installing Gentoo:

http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t...6-start-0.html

However, neither the keyboard or trackpad on a Macbook Pro are connected by USB, as they are not external peripherals. Unless you are actually using an external keyboard and trackpad on a laptop, connected by USB? Which would be weird.

Nope, you're wrong there. They are internal and they are USB.
The Macbook Pro (mine at least) doesn't have an 8042 chip.

I'll have to boot Linux again in order to get the full PCI listing.

Also, AFAIK I cannot do a networked Gentoo install, as I don't have an Ethernet connection
and my Wifi chip is not supported by the install CD (unlike other distros).
I'd have to see whether it's just a lack of firmware or what.

But Gentoo is my first choice of distros, if I can ever get it installed.

For those of us who don't have a network connection after booting the install CD,
it sure would be nice if we could run a BASH script that downloads all the latest
source tarballs needed for installing Gentoo, then put those on a secondary disk e.g. thumb drive.

This requirement of a live Net connection seems unrealistic.

Installing with SystemRescueCD is a good alternative; it has NetworkManager, which should pick up your wifi:

http://www.sysresccd.org/SystemRescueCd_Homepage
http://blog.kasunbg.org/2012/02/inst...om-livecd.html
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...cue-cd-741069/
http://swift.siphos.be/linux_sea/installgentoo.html

SystemRescueCD indeed a good alternative! It works even in old machine like P3,P4

I would think most of the people need browser when running Live disc.
FireFox inside SystemRescueCD supports many foreign languages.

There are ALSO so so many other Live disc "brand", I am looking for other choices as well.
please say any suggestions?? I would like to hear.

http://www.netrunner-os.com/download/
http://sourceforge.net/projects/pinguy-os/

http://lubuntu.net/tags/download

to login as root, type
sudo su