Random computer upgrade notes

I recently did some reshuffling of the computers in my home. I built a brand new gaming system from parts I bought on newegg. Intel i5 Sandybridge, 16 GB of memory and an nvidia video card that not only has a 120mm fan, but has two of them. The insanity. Then I used the parts from the old gaming system (first generation i5, 12 GB, ATI graphics) to give my ancient linux box a major upgrade.

Of Linux and Distros
The Linux box was so old (AMD Athlon x2 4400+ with 3 GB) that it was becoming a pain to use for any kind of desktop applications. I ended up neglecting it and spending most of my time on my windows box (I know! The horror!) with multiple putty sessions open. Also, it was running Gentoo Linux. In my local Linux user group, we have determined that people who are over 30 don't use Gentoo. It is a worthy distro and has many strengths. I have been using it for over 10 years on some system or another and because of its minimal nature, I learned a lot about Linux that I would otherwise be oblivious to. But it can be a real pain, especially to maintain for desktop use. I was getting tired of every other emerge --sync generating package conflicts, lengthy config file merges and the occasional system toolchain breakage that you had to resolve before rebooting (or loosing power!)  otherwise the system would completely eat itself. So, being a distinguished 31 years of age now, I decided it was time to drop Gentoo. So long and thanks for all the fish.