1) set up Gentoo 1.1a w/stage3 per install docs
2) installed kernel-2.4.19-r4, preempt, lowlatency
3) *important: merged binutils-2.12+ in order to take advantage of combreloc (but built kernel with 2.11 beforehand just to be safe)
4) *USE flags="-march=i686 -O3 -pipe -fomit-frame-pointer" Many people use a lot of crazy optimizations, but the only one to me that makes a noticable difference in "feel" is -fomit-frame-pointer, and I don't need to debug my system so its all good.
4) *rebuilt glibc with new binutils installed
5) finish install per docs. (I use metalog, and lilo instead of grub)
6) reboot
7) use hdparm to make sure DMA is enabled
8) you now have a Gentoo system ready to build apps with the combreloc tweak (you can test this by running apps with 'LD_DEBUG=statistics' and checking the relocations)
9) build X, kdebase, kdenetwork, mozilla, vim, etc... (doesn't matter)
10) *add fam to start on boot (allows KDE to track files quicker)
11) *add your hostname to /etc/hosts (if it's not already there)