I also use Gentoo with the devel 2.6.12 kernel
unpatched.
I'm really surprised how many Gentoo users there are.
I used SuSE and Mandrake before. The commercial distros all
have the same disadvantage: Releases.
A Gentoo (or even a Debian based) box can easily kept
up-to-date, and that's an important thing especially when
using audio applications. New versions appear too frequently.
Best regards
ce