Recently I was searching around trying to figure out when Debian's "unstable" [sic] distro will go to gcc 3.x and what's holding it back. I can't locate the debian-devel discussion I stumbled onto now, but basically someone was saying that users were fleeing to Gentoo because Debian can't keep up with these changes.

Since I just got a new computer and don't have much on it yet, I thought "what the hey" and decided to give Gentoo a try.

The installation was a thouroughly masochistic process. The install docs only take you up to getting the system booting. To get X going, AFAICT you're on your own.

I've got a functional fvwm going, but it's not nearly as nice as what Debian gives me. There's no "menu-update" that I can tell.

I've built the latest KDE and GNOME, although I've never been interested in desktop environments. I guess I'll look at them before I go back to Debian.

I doubt I'll be keeping Gentoo, though.