I would not *necessarily* recommend Gentoo for a new
Linux user,
other than to say that once he/she got it up and running they would
be a much more experienced Linux user. ;-)
Seconded. But if you have a bit experience then Gentoo is a really
smooth Distro. I'm a Desktop user and tried SuSE and Mandrake before,
but none of them survived on my machine as long as Gentoo did :) .
Best regards
ce