More or less finished installing a fresh new system today. Started at 12:53 on Sunday afternoon. There was also about 32 hours of work and 40 hours sleep. And some miscellaneous mucking around (like bootsplash antics). But otherwise, the system is shiny, new and fun.
Gentoo as a method of install is great for anyone who has run a Linux system for a little while, and has fun throwing him self around in the /etc mud. Its nessecary on the install. Minimal external....configuration is given for you (right down to compiling your own kernel on install) but it allows for a high level of customizability, and nothing went wrong (that wasn't my fault at least) -- though I can reiterate that X sucks. The IMPS/2 mouse drivers don't work properly. (yet they did on Debian's same version of X...bah.) Maybe I should (now that I just finished fixing everything to my custom) rip out XFree and put in the XOrg X Server. Its basically the same code right now anyway. But XFree seems to be dying. Most distros have already switched.
Learned even more about the inner workings of Linux this way as well, aaand Gentoo's init / rc.d setup is the most logical of the distros.
All in all, I'm happy with Gentoo and will more than likely be happy using it for the remainder of the month. I'll re-evaluate it in comparison to Debian after that.