It greatly depends on what you're trying to accomplish.  If you'd like 
the experience of building everything from nothing, stage 1 is for you 
(I did that just to see if I could).  If you've done it before, don't 
care about micromanaging system tweaks, or need the system up and 
running soon, then stage 3 is the way to go.

Bob Cober wrote:

> Thanks for the comments...
>  
> I've been an avid RedHatter for some time - I'm even a RHCE(stop your 
> laughing now hehe ;-)),  but Gentoo looks really great.  Portage sounds 
> good too...
>  
> So Gentoo - Here I come!!!
>  
> Any recommendations for which "stage tarball" to use?  Fro the site:
>  
> "The stage1 tarball is used when you want to bootstrap and build the 
> entire system from scratch. The stage2 tarball is used for building the 
> entire system from a bootstrapped "semi-compiled" state. The stage3 
> tarball already contains a basic Gentoo Linux system that has been built 
> for you..."
>  
> Stage1?
>