Just my 2 cents - take it for what its worth:

Several of my friends were singing the praises of Gentoo, and of course encouraging me to try it (C'mon...everyone else does it...) so I caved under the peer pressure.

I freely admit that the first time, I only looked at the manual when I got stuck during the install...I figured that the install would be pretty straightforward - boy did I get bit in the hindquarters for that! After it installed, I tried emerging a few packages, however I constantly got errors on them. I RTFM and RRTFM but couldnt find anything. Finally, I took the advice of the onscreen prompt and submitted a bug report to bugs.gentoo.com. They asked for a log of the install, which I sent to them, and they promptly replied with "We have closed your bug report. Please reopen it when you can provide useful information." After bouncing back and forth with them, trying to figure out what they considered "useful", I decided to start over with a clean slate...

The second install took just as long as the first (about two days total...) - this time I had the manual in hand and didnt type ANYTHING that I wasnt told to by the Sacred Document that was to be my salvation. Two days later, I had a system up and running and tried emerging some more packages...the same error appeared.

I finally chalked it up to incompatible hardware, although I couldnt narrow down which component. FWIW, they told me to run "emerge memcheck" to check the memory...got all sorts of errors running that as well, so I called it quits. Some things just arent meant to be, I suppose.

As a side note, I was cleaning off my workbench in the garage and found a 3 CD set with Redhat on it...having nothing better to do on a weekend, I popped the CD into the same box that I was installing Gentoo on. An hour later I had a fully functional system, and even managed to install a few applications with no problem. Since then, I have loaded Redhat on two more machines, including a laptop from Sager...yeah, I've never heard of them either. The impressive thing is that this is the first time I've ever gotten any Linux distro to recognize my sound card...and I didnt have to do a thing!

All this leads me to come up with this theory: There is a karmic force that determines which Linux distros are compatible with you. This all seeing, all knowing force watches over us and decides our fate - Gentoo lover, Redhat fanatic, Slackware genious...I seem to have ticked off the Gentoo gods somehow...

Yeah, that sounds like broken ram propably (or another hardware failure). If emerge gives an error that can't be linked to anything certain, it's likely a hardware failure (or bad gcc settings in make.conf). Btw, if you are using redhat 7, you should know that it has been end of lifed ages ago (actually even redhat 9.0 was end of lifed 30th of april iirc)... In other words, there is no official security support available for them anymore. I hope your not using those redhat systems online

If you like redhat, you'll propably like fedora core. It's the new free redhat. Fedora core 3 should be released next month btw. You might like SuSE too, it looks very professional and has excellent hardware autodetection.

Thanks for the feedback...Im pretty much a n00b when it comes to Linux, but I at least wanted to try it out. I had "official training" on Redhat in college...and by official training, I mean I showed up to class, the instructor took roll, then he left. So I basically spent an entire quarter learning how to play Xpilot over the network. *grin*

I have a couple of 'break boxes' here - I think I'll grab Fedora - I have a friend who is running that on his machine...just dont tell Redhat about it...I've heard Linux distros are like women...

gentoo's manual is not hard, just very Big and detailed, 111 pages to print entire thing. basicaly though gentoo is easy to install to do stage1 though.

format
download/extract stage1
set configs
compile to stage2(approx 3 hours)
set more configs
compile to stage3 (approx. 3 hours)

etc.

but stage 3 will not take that long.

basically

format
download/extract stage3 in /mnt/gentoo
set configs
setup portage
edit dns server names
chroot it

etc

My personal opinion? If you're like me and used to using Windows on a daily basis, then Gentoo probably isn't the best choice to start out with...I admit that MS products have made my brain soft and installing Gentoo is like competing in a decathlon...

I'm going to get back "into the gym" with Redhat and Fedora and once my mind is back in shape, I may take another stab at Gentoo....

Sorry to shatter your idea but there is a lot that can go bad with different distros :-0
I just put a secound harddrive in a box (nforce2) and nothing worked anymore.Constant crashes.since I am not at home a lot and don't really remember what I did when to what it took me some time to figure that one out.With bugs like that you a are at the mercy or the distro and what patches are in the particular kernel or not.
Other than that I'd say Gentoo is as buggy as any other distro (besides Debian stable) but it is easier to install whatever you want since you don't have to hunt dependencies - you can still run in all kind of other problem though.
On the other hand the basic install is no problem for anybody that can read and type (besides the bugs in the minimal 2004.2 CD) but get a system setup and going as you want to is another thing after that (just got into a flamewar at gentoo forums about that one).

I think it is becoming more and more obvious. I didn't expect anyone to really reply to my orrigional listing, and I have almost created a forum out of it. I am not alone. There are two basic types of people here. The ones who sware by gentoo, and the others, people like us that they convince to try it. I'm convinced. It sounds great. Yippee. I can't install install it. There are a lot of other people that can't install it. It still sounds great. I still can't install it. I can however install slack, debian, fedora, suse, xandros, libranet, and the many many others I have toyed with over the last year. none of them including slack, to more than an hour. I *hope* that the gentoo powers that be read this thread. I hope that they get past the notion that this is a lot of noobies complaining and who needs them anyway. I hope they see past that and notice a common, and wide spread theme. Everyone agrees it sounds great. Everyone wants to try it. Almost no one can get it to install. I am convinced that with the number of stories I have heared, that if everyone who tried to install it , could, they would be a leading distro. I can't say that for many. Maybe compiling your own computer sounds nice to some. maybe it should. I'm not trying to get my doctorate, I am trying to keep M$ off of my computer. I choose to do that with linux. The beauty of linux is much like baskin robins in that I can stay and try a multitude of flavors until I find my favorite, and I have a few. none of them took more than an hour to install. Take from this what you will. If it seems like complaining and whinnig, then your missing the point, and you probably always will. If gentoo were mine, I would as many users as I could get, and this seems the LARGEST, GREATEST, AND BRIGHTEST way to get them. They've been lining up at the door for a while now. Why not let them in ?
-Chase

True words but the problems are a little deeper than that:
there are only so many dev's that have only so much time and gentoo is pretty busy tearing portage apart and reconstructing it the other way around.Even the 2004.2 minimal CD didn't work for a lot of people (BIOS bugs of course -
If you have to have gentoo becaus you get into a lifethreatening situation or something like that otherwise drop me a mail and I'll walk you thru the install (after I know what hardware you got).
Don't know what the big deal is about having to have Gentoo if something else works for you though - it's not like your box suddenly doubles processor speed or something.
Hell - I installed Gentoo 0.9 (or so) when I had a computer for the first time in my life for 4 month and I am no rocket scientist.

Gentoo is primarily used by "enthusiasts" and people who have no problem installing it, and fixing anything that may go wrong. There's no reason to install Gentoo if you don't fall into this category.

If there's an easy installer for Gentoo, more people may start using it, but a lot of those people would probably be better off with a binary distribution anyway.

That is the very essence of linux. WHO IS TO SAY WHAT I AM BETTER OFF WITH ? People have said the same thing about slack and I've gotten it up in an hour. I do not doubt the Gentoo is for those with code in their DNA, all I, all we, are saying is that they would grow in users by the zillions if the install process were not acceptable credit for a doctorate thesis. Microsoft tried to tell me their way was in my best interest, and left us with no choice for some time (no offense mac users) now that we have linux, we have what makes us free to begin with, a choice. That being said, why should I be any better off with a major distro. This detracts from my, our, overall point. There is a line of people at the door. There are a lot of us who want in. given the size of the line, I think Gentoo would become one of the large distros if they would change this one feature to accomodate those of us here.
-Chase

Well you can go to gentoo.org and participate in their survey to make your grief heard there.

I was voicing my concerns to a hardcore Gentoo friend of mine - of course, he's been know to change his current distro of choice more often than he changes his socks - and he pointed out that Gentoo is still in the early stages of development and that there are bound to be a few bugs.

Given that perspective, I will just say this: I admire the Gentoo developers for sticking with the spirit of open source and giving us another option, and I'm sure that given enough time, they will have a few more of the bugs worked out. Perhaps I will try again in six months, but for now, I have to use a distro that is compatible with my hardware (which, to be honest is a bit on the outdated side), so I will stick with Redhat for now. Im sure next week, I will try Fedora. Maybe Slack the week after that.

As Chasecrum pointed out, its all about choice.

I wouldn't say there are bugs so much as a lack of a slick polished easy installation system. Of course there are a few bugs in portage, but most users won't encounter them. The lack of an installer isn't really a bug, just a missing feature. Admittedly, a pretty major feature for most users

My 1st try at Linux was the usual RH flavor. I have since switch 2 of my boxes over to the big "G" and glad I did. I have learned so much more about Linux in the past 2mnths on Gentoo, then I have using RH/Fedora in the last year. I'm not knockin RH/Fedora as they are great Distros and are quick and fairly easy to get up and running. I guess I just caught that Gentoo bug I guess. The documentation is by far the best I have ever seen which really helped out a lot. I just dived in with my 111 page Gentoo Handbook.

Gentoo is not for everyone I guess but it's really not as hard to install as some may think.

Portage!!!!!!!! w00t!!

Herein lies the trap of the linux-faithful's soul. I know, based on my own experiances that I can't let this go. I have installed to many distros to remember at this point. When I heard about slack, I was warned to stay away. Then HAD to install it. In my mind I was going to be a noobie until I had it on my desktop. After installing it I learned two things. First, I knew how to partition a hard drive for linux properly, and after several, several, OH GOD YES, several re-installs, I understood why it was important, and how it worked. The next thing I learned was that it really wasn't that hard.

This being said, I think Gentoo will eat at my thoughts until it is running on my machine. The mountain didn't gradualy get bigger. This mountain if Freakin' HUGE. Who hasn't seen the install manual for it ? I have a small bible I keep with me for when I get nostalgic. It pales in comparision to the size of this manual. (I guess big things can and do still come in small packages) but the miracle of linux requires study, and *almost* as much faith.

I wish that Gentoo would develop a gui installer. I am certain once it does, that it will rank among the top. There is a part of me that is glad that it isn't (shhhh....) Challenges that drive you mad are usualy the most rewarding.

Sooner or later, I am going to cave and install. and reinstall, and reinstall, and then, maybe, I will get it right.

(But I am still going to do my fair share of b*tching.)
-Chase