Linux Making the switch to gentoo for a while. Advice?

I'll put in a good word for XFCE (window/desktop manager thing) here too. Everything is GTK+ so prettttyyyy fast. On Ubuntu (xubuntu) at least it has no issue with Gnome/KDE apps, there's even an option to load their libraries at startup (alternate is to load them with the application)... dunno if that's a Xubuntu thing or if that comes with XFCE even on say Gentoo.
UI wise it's very similar to Win 2K (at least, it is as far as your colour scheme lets it be), or XP with the Luna thing turned off.

 

Would a beginner get anywhere with Sabayon ?

l've been using various flavours of Ubuntu for some time now but would like to try something a bit more interesting..

 

Sabayon is frowned upon by the Gentoo Developers, mainly because the Sabayon Developers set some "dangerous" CFLAGS and CXXFLAGS. Installing Sabayon is easier then Gentoo, but don't fear Gentoo, the manual is as good as they get and normally explain every step you have to execute to build a working system quite in depth.

 

My opinion is simple, for the first time you gentoo (derivate included) built it yourself, it is a great way to learn and it is not that hard (in fact it is fairly easy if you read carefully and ask questions). After that, if you want to install it again, then you can use sabayon /korrora /gentoo gui installer and use emerge -e world to recompile everything after editing your make.conf, but for the first time, the best thing is to do it from scratch.

 

As a long time gentoo user I feel all warm and fuzzy when I hear about someone switching over. Yes it will take a while to set up. The 64 bit version is the way to go if you can. Runs hella fast and recognizes all 4 gig of ram and the 1 gig combined on the video cards!!! I would heed the warnings about the *bin emerges. Nothing is more peeving than trying to figure out why your plugins and codecs won't work. There are plenty of sites for setting up the eyecandy if you so choose. I however use XFCE myself.