I have been using Linux as a desktop system at home for a number years, with my usage focusing on academic work and multimedia tasks such as music scoring and video.
Until very recently I used a well-known rpm-based distribution, which was a good introduction to Linux and had the advantage of a user-friendly installation process. The difficult with this, and a number of similar, distributions is the focus on periodic releases where the update process can be unreliable. A major attraction of Gentoo is the ability to do a once-only installation of the base system and then be able to customise and upgrade this base system indefinitely.
As an IT-literate amateur (with a little bit of very dated formal training in programming), it is a revelation to use Gentoo and I think it shows the flexibility and reliability of Linux at its best. The initial installation and configuration certainly requires time and patience, so it's wise to keep a working system running during the initial setup, for instance on a separate partition. Probably the main hurdle is acquiring a good understanding of your hardware for the initial kernel configuration. In my case, I found that a well-known network card driver was present on the Gentoo live disk but not in Gentoo's default Genkernel so it took a bit of research on the Internet to troubleshoot this particular issue. Configuring the kernel was otherwise surprisingly straightforward.
Once set up, using Gentoo is a real pleasure. Available official and user-generated documentation is very helpful and extensive while the portage software repository is huge and well-maintained. The requirement to compile software from scratch adds an element of complexity, but I often found the apparent simplicity of my previous rpm distribution a bit illusory -- I frequently ended up with versioning issues which were hard to resolve. I also found that the vendor-specific configuration files on my former system made the configuration of Linux much more complex than it actually needed to be. There was something of an uneasy mix between GUI-based configuration and the inevitable manual editing of text files once the GUI options had proved to be inadequate.
I have been particularly impressed by the ease with which complex software like Cinelerra can be installed on Gentoo. The installation process is no easier or harder than with a binary distribution but much more flexible. My initial installation of Cinelerra without the OpenGL compile flag was easily corrected with a short line of text in the Gentoo package.use configuration file. It is interesting to compare this straightforward solution to some of the issues which are evident when users try to grapple with an rpm-based system where the vendor has decided not to include a particular compile flag.
In the usual manner of the IT press, Gentoo is often compared with other distributions in terms of performance and ease of use. Sometimes it's a bit like comparing apples and pears. Some Linux distributions appear to be taking their users more towards a one-size-fits-all Windows-like experience whereas Gentoo offers complete configurability and flexibility -- the ability to build a unique system which optimises the use of system hardware. It demands a bit more technical knowledge which can be readily acquired but the effort is worthwhile in my view.
I haven't mentioned any other Linux distributions by name because they all have their strengths. I am a strong advocate of Linux, particularly the underlying values of freedom and collaboration which are evident across much of the GNU/Linux community. I think the Gentoo approach embodies these values in a particularly successful way.
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