I've benn reading about Gentoo and I think its a pretty good distribution, but is also a bit difficult to learn and configure, so Is it worth the download or do I have to keep on using Debian etch, also if I can use Debian and configure it without problems, am I ready to try Gentoo?
Does it have a text installer like debian and if it not how is the gentoo installer?
Does portage solve dependencies like deb and are there many programs avaliable for gentoo?
Does it detect the hardware automatically?

Anyone is ready to try Gentoo. If you can read then it isn't difficult at all, I used it as my second distrobution with my first being Mandrake 9. All I did in Mandrake was make KDE look cool with some stuff from kde-look.org, nothing more advanced than that and Gentoo wasn't hard.
Gentoo doesn't have an installer, you have to do everything manually but they have an online handbook that walks you through it, if you had another computer you could install it via SSH and just copy-paste, thats how detailed the handbook is.
Emerge handles all your dependencies for you just like apt-get however Gentoo is a from source distro. Installing stuff will take a couple of hours, if your machine is like a P3 or less it'll probably take you over a day to install the distro.
Depends, technically no. When you build your kernel, if you do it manually then definitely no but if you use genkernel then it builds a ton of modules in and hotplug will load the correct ones on boot so in that case, sort of yes.

So gentoo is very likely to BSD because of the portage system, so whats the pros and cons of gentoo?

Install it and find out for yourself. Something that is a negative to me may be a positive for you. It's called "forming your own opinion" and it's a great theory because everyone thinks differently you see.

portage is not like apt. I tried apt, and it got itself into a depends loop that required a reinstall of the OS. Portage will let you force things, so you can repair things if it gets into such blocking problems. But it does install dependecies just fine.

pros:

all source install, with the ocasional binary package (stuff that has no source available).
customizable (not like LFS, but good enough, considering it will manage all the installed packages).

cons:

slow bootup (like 20-40 seconds, but i like near instant boots like from LFS).

A major advantage of gentoo is that every part of the distro is built for your computer by your computer, there's no generic part of it. Because of that, you'll get the smoothest running linux out there - made especially for your computer... nothing extra, nothing bloated to accomodate lots of different hardware/software - all specific.

I found a major disadvantage to be the time it takes to get going. It took me more than a day to setup a gentoo machine. Once it was finally together, getting things like X to work, especially with accelerated graphics was taking so much time that it wasn't worth the return I would get from the smoother running distro.

That said, I learned more about Linux in general from setting up a gentoo box than with any other exersize to date.

Gentoo is a fundamentally source-code-based distribution. There are not a lot of binary packages. Most of the stuff you compile yourself, on your own machine, including the kernel.

The portage system-update procedure works by downloading source packages from appropriate servers, and compiling them on your machine.

The system is not for the uninitiated, nor for the beginner, but it is certainly not overwhelming if you are comfortable with a command-line. I switched to it as my third distribution .. after Red Hat and Linux From Scratch .. and use it now exclusively.

Advantages? Well, you really begin to understand just how the Linux system really works, and you can arrange for the system to be extremely "lean and mean." It has exactly what you need, compiled for your system, and nothing else. It can run like a greased demon.

Now... let's contrast that with what the "more traditional" distro systems are trying to do. They want you to be able to get Linux up-and-running, reliably and easily, on just about any system without a great deal of understanding or intervention on your part. I think that almost any of them do a respectable job of that. So, judge your own experience level, and your own personal tolerance for ... !! Choose what seems the best for you.

Gentoo used to be great...

but now if you want something, you go in testing and find out it is full of bugs or, you keep stable and wonder why you're not running sarge because it doesn't lag behind. Gentoo is no more bleeding edge. If you want to know more, go LFS or Slack.

It is true check distrowatch, and then gentoo bugzilla, you'll see.

Geert.

So, gentoo is source based and works fine on any computer because it is build by the computer itself right?
Also, does it comes with a partitioning tool during the install or I have to have tha partition premade for gentoo?
And does it comes with a boot loader like grub, lilo?

During install you partition the disk with fdisk or cfdisk which is included in the minimal install cd. As far as a bootloader, it is up to you. You can install either grub, lilo, or whatever else you might like. Gentoo is about choice, your choice.

The other thing is, don't give up too quickly. It took me several tries to get Gentoo up and going. Hung up mainly at the kernel stage, but now compling the kernel is easy for me. The key is to know what hardware you have. So was it worth the time and effort? For me yes.

Gentoo is great "if" you have the extra time waiting for compiles

Unluckily, I don't have much time to wait for the system to compile, so I think I'll stick with Debian, I don't wanna wait hours for OpenOffice to compile itself.

If you want to get a Gentoo system up and running quickly without spending a long time to compile stuff, then just use the package cd to install your big applications. You can then always update them later after you have a basic system up and running. With the extra package CD it should take you 1-3hrs to install Gentoo from a Stage 3 depending on the speed of your computer.