I have been tinkering with Gentoo for atleast two months on my Toshiba Qosmio g45 laptop off and on. I have to say that I was not succesful at all. Well I got it compiled but could never get X working quite right.

Last night I installed Calculate and it was one of the most painless linux installs I have done yet. Its only been about 24 hours now, but so far everything runs flawless. Its fast and so far seems rock solid.

The only issue I am having is sound and I am sure I will have it figured out by the end of the evening, not a big deal.

Either way, Hats off to you guys for a fantastic distro. And a BIG thank you for making it easier for someone as new as me (less then a years experiance) with linux.

Out of the 7 (I think) pc's in the house, 6 are one distro or another and I am working on converting the wife

Thanks guys!

Hello! Thanks for your comment.
It's very nice that it's necessary for anybody. At CLD 9.7 we've paid attention to the sound and your sound card should be detected. If you've installed 9.7. version but hadn't sound you should check what would be written by 'alsasond' during installation. May be you only need to play with 'alsamixer' settings. If you have some PCs you can try to set Calculate Directory Server, so you will be able to use your account, settings and files on every PCs at home. It's very comfortable.
Thanks and good luck!

I actually came back to ask for help on the sound as I have not got it figured out quite yet.

I will try those things that you mentioned and report back.

Should I start a seperate thread in case someone else has the same issue down the road?

You can use 'alsaconf', launch by root.
If you fail, you can start a seperate thread.