I purchased my MacBook back in November of 2007, shortly after the Santa Rosa chipset update. I'd use Mac OS X a little previously, mostly in the form of trying out OSX86 on my old laptop. After using it for several months as my primary mobile platform, I decided it was time for something different.

OS X is nice and all. User-friendly, intuitive, and works fantastic with the hardware Apple ships. I still feel it's lacking in some areas where Linux excels, such as configurability and the space for customization. Not to mention that there's essentially no decent games out for OS X. I can install Linux and throw on a native version of UT2004 and play away now.

Installation wasn't horribly difficult, but Mac OS X was needed at least initially, and I didn't realize this. Gentoo now boots without an issue on the MacBook. All that I need to finish doing is installing the programs I need and setting up the WiFi.

I'm hoping that I have all the hardware working correctly in the next week or so, and that includes the web cam and touchpad. My only other concern is battery life. It'd be fantastic if I get the same amount or more battery out of the machine with Linux.

LinkedIn is a social networking site for professionals. You won't go on there and find all the teenage themes, music, and video. Rather, you're able to add a single picture of yourself, and your profile focuses much more on your job experience, awards, and interests.

Colin invited me to join LinkedIn a few months ago, and I think it's been worth it. Mind you, it is free. I've established a network with several of the contacts I work with on obtaining review samples, as well as a few "corporate folk" from Buffalo Wild Wings. Not to say it'll grab me a new job in the near future, but anything helps.

I added a LinkedIn button to the staff profiles at BIOSLEVEL. It shows up on the "About Us" page right next to the person's name. Of course, not all the staff have it, as much as I'd like them to.

I wonder what Linux developers are on LinkedIn.

Nikos posted his desktop to his blog, which was syndicated by Planet Larry, a Gentoo-oriented syndication. My blog is also syndicated there. He tagged a few people to show their setups, and I've been meaning to take a few pictures of mine, so I decided to show off as well. You can see a few other setups from Gentoo users and developers and George on Planet Larry.

My brand new Nikon D40 DSLR came yesterday, and today I've got a fully-charged battery. So why not take a few snapshots with the new camera?

First up is the desktop itself. From left to right, there's a 17" Samsung LCD, a 22" Acer LCD, and a 20" Princeton LCD. The 22" and 20" are connected to my desktop through DVI to my GeForce 8800GTX. The 17" is used with my benchmarking rig, or my server as needed. Below the monitors are my MacBook, G15 Keyboard, and Logitech G5 and MX510 mice.

Next up are my towers. The one on the bottom is my desktop, featuring a Core2Quad Q6600 CPU, 4GB of RAM, a GeForce 8800GTX video card, two 36GB Raptors, and about 400GB between three other drives.

Above it is my benchmarking rig, which has an AMD Phenom 9500 Quad-Core CPU, 2GB of RAM, a 250GB hard dive, and an AMD Radeon HD3870 video card.

Lastly, I'm posting a picture of some of my upcoming reviews and previous reviews. They're sitting on my shelves. Some of the stuff I can't talk about is behind the sheet. Shhhh!

I didn't picture my home server because it's currently in pieces waiting for a new heatsink. I also didn't picture the Asus Barebones I previously reviewed on BIOSLEVEL because it's connected to my TV for an upcoming article!

I hope you enjoyed my workstation. I'm tagging Roy, Colin, and John.

The Gentoo 2008.0 Beta has been in existence for a few months, but I've only recently gotten around to testing it. Obviously I like the updated kernel and hardware detection since the last release, but there's a few things I'm not a fan of, or rather, one large thing:

A graphical installer for installing the base system. I don't know. I guess it'll make it easier for new Gentoo users, but I think I may very well stick to the good old command line for installation. With each release, Gentoo seems to be moving farther and farther away from what it used to be.

Will the graphical installer include support for a Stage 1 installation? I doubt it. In Stage 1, everything on the computer is compiled natively according to the user's settings. For example, a base system comes with components X, Y, and Z. In a stage 3 setup, these components are pre-compiled and left alone. In stage 1, each of these components are recompiled for optimal use.

I just hope Gentoo doesn't move towards using binary packages.

My first Linux distribution was a very old version of Red Hat with X-Windows as a GUI. I think I was in 5th or 6th grade, and I bought it from a used book store for $10. From there, I went to Mandrake Linux 7, then Fedora, and finally to Gentoo. I was never a fan of RPM installers, as there were always issues with dependencies and uninstalling.

One of my friends, Zack had recently become a fan of Gentoo Linux. I abandoned RPM hell and became a fan of Gentoo. Despite, at the time, the best way to install Gentoo was through a stage 1 (compiling everything from start to finish), I loved it. Even if it took a day to get a usable system on a 400MHz Pentium 2, it was great.

Despite some obvious issues with dependencies in Gentoo, and many claiming Portage is just a slew of unmanageable code, I'm still in love with the speed and configuration of Gentoo. Sure, some things aren't install-and-go, but you learn more when having to configure most programs yourself.

Recently, I've been installing the latest version of Ubuntu on many of the machines I use to benchmark hardware for BIOSLEVEL. I can't say I'm a fan. I'll agree that it's fantastic that Ubuntu developers have put so much time into developing and improving many applications and daemons for desktop use, but it feels slow.

Why run native 586 code on a 686+ CPU? Why install software that doesn't take advantage of a CPU's extensions? To be completely honest, using the same hardware, a Gentoo System with Compiz Fusion running feels more responsive than an Ubuntu system without any desktop effects enabled.

While much of my testing will be done with Ubuntu, my primary Linux environment for regular usage remains Gentoo.