I put "easy" in quotes because I don't think RH or Mandrake really are easy. They automate things for you, but Linux isn't the kind of OS where automation is always a good thing. It automates some stuff but leaves some of the harder stuff (searching for dependencies for example) to you. And when something breaks, you're often left completely in the dark, because you have no idea what the OS did when it was auto-setting things up for you. If you want to use Linux you have to know how it works from top to bottom. Gentoo is a good way to learn. Maybe newbies who've never touched Linux in their lives do very well with Gentoo.