if you havent tried it, get the new Knoppix.
its a 1x live cd with great auto-hardware detection and you can install it to the hardrive via a simple gui script.
including formatting my 40gb, it took about 15 mins to install it on my PIII 450 with 256ram!
Yeah but knoppix isn't that great for an everyday OS. It's more of a portable OS or a "try before you buy" kind of linux.
what do you mean not that great for a everyday install?
I've been running Knoppix 3.2 hd-install as my main linux box/server for the past year with no problems.
comes with most every program you need on the 1cd, and apt-get makes installing/updating programs much easier than using rpms.
I didnt have the patience of setting up Gentoo. tried a stage 3 install a year ago and went back to a Debian based system.