I have heard way to much about Gentoo to not try it out, but have also heard the install is not so easy.

Well, the install is not easy relative to, say, SuSE or Redhat. Its not all automatic and requires you to actually do some work on the command line (setting up the mirrors for portage, optionally configuring the make.conf file to optimize compilation, partioning via good 'ol fdisk, mkfs-ing filesystems, chroot'ing and such) but a printable Quick Install Guide (http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/gentoo-x86-quickinstall.xml) really takes out the difficulty. I, at least, had no problem setting it up, a couple of times. The only real issue with Gentoo is that if you do go for the compile-everything-mode it takes a good full day to get up and running, and compiling in X and KDE or GNOME is best left for a second day of work (or just let it run overnight). You *can* use prebuilt binary packages, but then why bother using Gentoo? Additionally, all the preinstall stuff can be done with the Gentoo Live CD or something like Knoppix (which I would have used, but needed 2.6 kernel support, and at the time couldn't get Knoppix to boot a 2.6 kernel, whereas the Gentoo Live CD did have it).

Someone has mentioned it before, but how about an install fest so others can get hands on with different distro installs?

An installfest would be a great idea. Could hand out live CD's to linux-hopefuls and install in people's computers. I'd be up for trying to get some people running Gentoo and other distros. -- Carlton C. Stedman II, sageman@wpi.edu "To iterate is human, to recurse, divine." -- L. Peter Deutch