What is the best linux to use for playing games. I've been thinking about getting either RH-9 or Mandrake.

Well, I know RH9 is okay, but try gentoo - it's an excellent gaming platform.

I heard Yoper is about the same as Gentoo, but only takes you between 10 and 20 minutes to install, as opposed to hours and sometimes days with Gentoo.

That's because Yoper is basically Gentoo made for precompiled packages, Gentoo is all about source.

I tried VIDALINUX, the free version, and its GENTOO from a stage 3 for AthlonXP. It's slooooooooow.
If you want a easy, and fast one try YOPER. I just finished installing it, and it lives to its reputation. the fastest out of the box linux. It however needs more packages. Gentoo definately has it beet for packages, but for speed, im not so sure.

Everyone always says how fast Gentoo is. Are you telling me those couple of seconds of added speed make up for the hours and hours of wasted time spent compiling software from source? I honestly have to say that Gentoo is the worst Linux I have tried to date...although that is just me. I finally got fed up halfway through the install, shut the computer off, and reinstalled SUSE.

Just looked on Yoper's site, and Yoper isn't solely based on Gentoo. Actually, it lists parts taking from different distro's...and Gentoo isn't even on the list.

# The base system is built from scratch.
# Packagetools come from Slackware (installpkg, removepkg).
# Raidtools from Redhat.
# Kudzu Hardware recognition from RedHat.
# Startup scripts from RedHat.
# Mozilla from Netscape Ltd.
# OpenOffice from Sun.
# Hwsetup from Knoppix.
# Sax2, Yast2 from SuSE

http://www.yoper.com/about.html#1

I agree YOPER has nothing to do with GENTOO. Only VidaLinux.