Linux Benchmarking

I'm building a new system soon, and with an 80GB primary drive, i thought i might partition it into 8*10GB chunks and try a different OS on each.

Further to that, i want to test speed differences between different configurations, mostly KDE vs GNOME vs no X, but also DEB/RPM-based vs Gentoo.
i'm curently using SuSE, and like it, and my boss talked me into trying Gentoo, saying "it's faster", but i'd like to see if, and how much...

I downloaded LAPACK a few years ago, never actually figured out how to use it though, so if anyone knows what to do, let me know. Otherwise, i'm looking for a nice, easy to use, all-in-one (or i can always do a hackjob wave-ogg/flac/mp3 test, but i'd prefer something more comprehensive)

cheers

As a relatively long-time Gentoo user (switched from Slack in early 2004) let me express the way I feel about the whole "Gentoo is really a lot faster" argument:

Basically, if you try a distro that has packages based on your architecture and those are installed, there is going to be little to no difference in speed between that distro and a built-from-scratch deal like Gentoo or LFS.

The real power of Gentoo and the like is more along the lines of starting with a very bare system and adding only what you want. This alone can make it much faster than others as you don't have Apache starting if you are serving up a webpage (yes, I know you can disable that in any distro, but sometimes you just don't think about that kind of thing).

Also, portage as a package management system is very nice to use to keep the system up to date. However, this functionality is also mirrored in most popular distros today as well.

Why use Gentoo? It is indeed great for learning how to use Linux. The first install you blindly follow the well-documented procedure, but each time you install it on a new machine (or have such a massive update pending that you decide to rebuild) you become more aware of what you're doing and, as such, can fix and or tweak things that may not be mentioned in the howto. The other strong rationale for Gentoo that I see is if you know that at a very low level you are going to need to patch things and/or do special, non-standard setup for exotic or ill-supported hardware (read: my laptop and desktop). Being intimately involved with the building process allows you to prepare for know issues and try to work through the unforeseen bugs you will inevitably shake out.

Is Gentoo faster than other distros? Some more than others, but even in the best case not by a landslide. Is Gentoo better? In many ways, for me, yes.

P.S. No matter what distro you use, the Gentoo forums and wiki are some of the best resources around, if you weren't already aware.