My first Linux distro was Gentoo, after I failed with SUSE and Debian. I installed Gentoo more than 7 years ago. I still use Gentoo, moreover I still use _the same_ Gentoo, I never had a reinstall, just coping/moving the hard drive the system to the new computer. However it is important to note that Gentoo isn't the easy way to have a linux desktop. As far as I know Gentoo does not have _any_ installer you have to install it by hand in command line. After installing you get a command line, and You have to install and setup everything. It took me 2 days to get a desktop back then. Compiling is quite time consuming but it wasn't a problem at all back then, as I had to read a bunch of howts/tutorials/documentation. All in all it is a nice system, and easy to use if you know what are you doing.
Nowdays Arch may have better documentation. The easiest option is using Ubuntu, but please do not use E17 if you don't know what are you doing. Ubuntu is quite similar to Windows, if something broke down you have to google for fix. On Gentoo if something broke down blame yourself, you did it, and probably you also know how to fix it.