I am trying out Gentoo and it keeps warning me that HOME isn't set.

Does anyone know how this is done?

Nu-Bee,

HOME is an environment variable that points to the home directory of the user currently logged into the system. You can set your home directory at the shell prompt with the following command:

# export HOME=/home/<username>

To permanently set the home directory path for a user, edit your /etc/passwd file and add the path to the line that corresponds to your username.

Example:

myname:x:1000:100::/home/myname:/bin/bash

Your group ID and user ID will probably be different.
Editing this file will survive reboots.

I've already done all that but for some reason KDE isn't seeing it or something.

If I emerge something in a terminal as root in KDE, I keep getting "HOME not set".

Till I get this fixed I am going to have to set it manually. I am experimenting with my ~/.bashrc and ~/.bash_profile also.

BTW, I have tried Debian, Slackware, Vector, Lindows, Red Hat, and numerous other distros.

Gentoo is the first one I have really fell for...other than Mandrake.

I feel like Gentoo & Mandrake are almost two sides of the same coin.

...a perfect complementary package.