  [Abridged] The entropy distribution of the intracluster gas reflects both
accretion history of the gas and processes of feedback which provide a further
non-gravitational energy besides the potential one. In this work, we study the
profiles and the scaling properties of the gas entropy in 24 hot (kT_{gas} > 6
keV) galaxy clusters observed with Chandra in the redshift range 0.14-0.82 and
showing different states of relaxation. We recover the gas density, temperature
and entropy profiles in a non-parametric way. Adding the hydrostatic
equilibrium hypothesis, radial profiles are also obtained from the deprojection
of the surface brightness, allowing to verify whether the hydrostatic
equilibrium is a tenable hypothesis by comparison with the spectral
measurements. We confirm that this is the case on scales larger than 100 kpc
and discuss the deviations observed in few non-cooling core clusters in the
inner regions. We show that the entropy profiles are remarkably similar outside
the core and can be described by simple power-laws with slope of 1.0-1.2. We
measure an entropy level at 0.1 R_{200} of 100-500 keV cm^2 and a central
plateau which spans a wide range of value (~ a few-200 keV cm^2) depending on
the state of relaxation of the source. To characterize the energetic of the
central regions, we compare the radial behaviour of the temperature of the gas
with the temperature of the dark matter T_{DM} by estimating the excess of
energy Delta E = 3/2 k(T_{gas}- T_{DM}). We point out that Delta E ranges from
~ 0 in typical cooling-core clusters to few keV within 100 kpc in non-cooling
core systems. We also measure a significant correlation between the total iron
mass and the entropy outside the cooling region,whereas in the inner regions
they anti-correlate strongly.
