Gentoo is what ever you like it to be; that is what makes it so interesting. You always install the same distribution with rolling updates and no release versions. Gentoo can be a...

Desktop with bleeding edge 3D graphics. Choose your own desktop environment or just mix them. The possibilities are endless.

Development Station for any software you can imagine.

Embedded System, stripped down to a few megabyte and it has 11 official supported architectures.

Server with endless possibilities. A blown up cluster with distributed computing to wifi router at home, secure hardened, normal or development environment.

I have tried just about all distros that I have seen and most of the time it seems like I try a new distro I run into various problems relating to either the hardware I am running it on or the software that I am installing on it. I always return to Gentoo because it just seems to work or at least gives me an error message that tells me exactly how to get it to work (usually a package saying that it needs a specific USE flag enabled)

This is not a distributions of Linux for the average new user, but more for the power user. While the installation is more complex than most other Linux distributions the user gets bleeding edge software and a potential faster OS in return. Gentoo is supported on a large range of hardware x86 32/64 bit, PPC, MIPS, and SPARC to name a few.

Gentoo is the only distro you can customize in all aspects!
No more unneeded dependencies will be installed.

It seems like I've tried them all, but I always return to gentoo. Since the funtoo snapshots came out it makes installing a breeze (30 minutes)