I just installed Calculate Linux 11.6 KDE edition and overall I am impressed with the distribution. I have always liked source based distributions like FreeBSD and prefer compiling the software directly. The speed is very good and Calculate Linux has a polish to it that I appreciate.
Some general comments:
If you have an ATI video card, install in vesa video mode 1024 x 768. Every other video display mode that I tried would die before the Live DVD would load into the KDE desktop. The proprietary ATI driver worked fine after the install.
My first attempt to install had a home partition that used xfs and the install died. When I used ext4 for the home partition, the install succeeded. I do not know if this is a general issue.
I installed to an external usb hard drive and Calculate managed to get Grub set up properly on the first try. I am very impressed since many other distributions do not handle this well and assign the wrong locations in the grub.conf file.
Xsane, the scanner program, only can find my scanner when I run it as root. I believe that this is a Gentoo issue since I also experienced it when I ran Sabayon which is also Gentoo based.
It takes a little while to get used to emerge, unmasking packages and the whole portage system but after a little practice, I do like it.
The installer program ran well and had enough features so that you could handle advanced features without making the install itself complicated.
Overall, this is excellent work on the part of the Calculate Linux team. Good luck on the business end in selling support to companies that want it managed properly in a business setting.
Thank you for your comments. From the menu LiveCD, you can choose the video driver. At the same proprietary ATI-driver will be installed during the boot CD. An excellent test for the file system is the installation of the distribution. Please be patient choosing XFCE. Previously, there was a utility cl-unmask, now emerge took this job on themselves, should be easier.
Thanks Ralph Ellis yur comment proves the quality of Calculate, maybe this is the best project Linux with Gentoo. Thanks.