I've given up on Gentoo for now, more due to my struggles with the default configuration for Gnome than anything else (gconf schemas up the spout after I changed the X keyboard). Since I was taking the laptop on holiday I wanted something which required a bit less maintenance. I first installed Progeny Developer Edition, which looked quite nice and installed easily enough but seemed to be lacking in recent updates. I then went for Ubuntu instead and, as with my previous experience installing on a laptop, it installed very easily and it was then very easy to get everything else I wanted on. Only thing I'm missing from Gentoo is my Toshiba laptop utils to let me run the fan the whole time while I'm plugged into the mains.