Sabayon Linux 5
Sabayon Linux is a remastered version of Gentoo Linux. I first took a look at it when I was writing for ExtremeTech, back when Sabayon Linux was in version 4.1. This latest release is version 5.0.
Gentoo, as you may already be aware, has long had a reputation for not being particularly friendly to folks new to it. Although it has shined as a distribution for Linux power users, it has sometimes scared away less tech-savvy users that might have found it somewhat intimidating to deal with.
Sabayon Linux aims to tame Gentoo and make it more accessible to non-power users and it largely succeeds at this goal in this release.
Note that Sabayon Linux is available in Gnome or KDE. For this review I went with the Gnome version.
What’s New In This Release
Here’s a list of the new stuff in this release:
Less than 2GB size (1.6GB for Sabayon5 GNOME x86)
Based on new GCC 4.4.1 and Glibc 2.10
Shipped with Desktop-optimized Linux kernel 2.6.31
Providing extra Server-optimized and OpenVZ-enabled kernels in repositories
Installer now available in multiple languages
Complete Ext4 filesystem support (used by default)
Complete Encrypted filesystems support (via dmcrypt, available in the Installer)
Featuring X.Org 7.5 and up-to-date FLOSS, NVIDIA, AMD video drivers
Containing GNOME 2.26 (2.28 ready) and KDE 4.3.1
Outstanding 3D Desktop applications (Compiz, Compiz Fusion and KWin) working out of the box
Bringing Entropy Framework (Package Manager) 0.99.3
Shipped with OpenOffice 3.1 productivity suite, Multimedia applications
Transform Sabayon into an full-featured HTPC Operating System (Media Center) using XBMC
Shipped with World of Goo Demo – best 2D game ever!
Sexiest Skin ever! (Ian Whyman rocks)
Black is beautiful and the Sabayon Linux desktop is bathed in black.
(10 votes, average: 4.00 out of 5)
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(4.75 out of 5)
Good review (albeit somewhat brief). Sabayon really sets itself apart from Gentoo with the Entropy package manager. This can be utilized by the “equo” command or through the GUI called “Sulfur”.
The speed of Sabayon has been an issue since before I first tried it way back during the 3.x series. It has come a long way in boot speed but installation could use some improvement, as you mentioned. And the package selection during install has been requested before, but likely requires a good amount of re-work and tweaking.
Another thing I can’t say I’m fond of is the boot song. I remember the 3.x series and its bold ambient music song that played. But that’s just my personal taste.
I’ve installed lots of distros, Fedora, Ubuntu, Mandriva, Slackware, LinuxMint, OpenSuse, and others, on VMWare, VirtualBox, Parallels or VirtualPC, and I must say that I found more problems installing on my PC than in a virtual machine, and generally, if I had a problem when installing in a virtual machine, on my PC there were even more problems. As for Sabayon 5, the installer crashed two or three times before I could install the system on my computer. After that everything was ok, but I can think of a few other linux systems wich are faster, and more configurable. But again, is a good distro and it worth a try.
” This is a INSTALATION’s review, not a DISTRIBUTION’s review”:
well, as most distributions are meant to be installed, that is rather logical…
The exception is with live CDs/DVDs , as they are not meant to be *systematically* installed :
I used Sab ayon 5.0 as a live DVD to unetboot (on a net”book”), and, though it had nice features (keymap selection, NTFS partitions are easily mounted) it is less easy
*to add software (it seems illogical, but with a huge file | filesystem mapping /usr/local or /opt, it is often rather easy to recompile parts from source and to complete a live CD) and
*to use than Scientific Linux liveDVD (some headers are missing in tcl/tk; KDE never crashed -in the case of Sabayon 5.0 and me- , but seems to have an irregular RAM greediness, with spikes; Scientific Linux asks you to choose a password every time you booot from its DVD, which might be safer than having no/a predefined password like Sabayon).
After hearing so much about Linux, I decided to give it a try a couple of years ago. I started with Ubuntu. It totally screwed up my machine. Maybe it was just me! I like the graphics in Linux and I like that you can configure it just about any way you desire. However, Linux DOES have its faults also just like Windows. What I don’t like about Linux is that there are some programs that will not run on it. Programs that I HAVE to HAVE. They won’t work on Wine either. So, Windows has its pluses and minuses also. Everybody raves about Microsoft and Bill Gates, well, if it wasn’t for Bill Gates we’d all be using Mac’s which, I guess is a good thing. Anyway, some hate windows, some like it. Some hate Linux, some like it. As for me, I’m going to continue to use both of them.
Sabayon 5.0 is a veru good Distro!
easy, fast, high performance, by powerfull as the gentoo.
Green, Sabayon is totally different of Ubuntu, and is a differente linux, also.
Sabayon uses a special binary installer, entropy, that install gentoo binaries optimized for hardware architeture, but also may use the Portage, the installer of Gentoo, that automatically make their binaries from sources (compilation linux).
therefore, sabayon is a binary-compilation Linux.
Sabayon is my favorite Distro, i use Gentoo also.
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