Here comes my piece of advice, Ive been using linux for a while and so far ive tested: Slackware, Debian, Ubuntu and Gentoo (that im using right now). I wouldnt give gentoo as a first option to someone that is new to linux, since it has no installer thing can becoem very messy and confuse. Ive expent 2 days to set gentoo up here ans usre it wasnt hard but also far from trivial. if you want a great distro to start I would recommned you Ubuntu -> www.ubuntulinux.org It is a debian based distro, based on sudo, so it keeps you without a root account but with a user who is able to perfom root actions, it will avoid you a lot of trouble. Also worth to mention that it uses apt-get with IMHO is one of the best package managers around. Anyway welcome to linux world and in case of trouble msg me / post at the board linux is about a community and people helping people to obtain knowledge, or at least should be this way.