In Gentoo, the setup is pretty standard and low level. There is no installer like Redhat and Mandrake, so you have to nkow what is in your computer before starting. Luckily, since this is the same as Debian, BYO, and a few others that are highly configurable, the start of the setup where you configure your hardware is pretty standard. It basically involves knowing what modules to build in your kernel. Look in the Linux forum at the kernel guide posted by Laclasse.