It is smooth. I tweak it for my cpu and unload some of the video drivers - like trident - that I'll never use and pick up a bit of performance.
Unfortunately, the gentoo build script has failed twice on me - X doesn't work. Tried a manual configure and screwed the pooch on that one myself. The debian method I use always works - score one for debian. I'll have to plow through the gentoo wiki a bit more before trying again.
Using VSIDO for an NFS file/media server. Need to get it going as an (internal) ftp server; I carried over my ftp configuration from slackware (or so I thought), but something isn't right now. But all things considered VSIDO as server = happiness.