Sabayon, the Gentle Gentoo: Gentoo, formerly known as Enoch Linux is one of the pioneers among the Linux distributions. It is well-known and loved for its speed (the Gentoo species is the fastest swimming penguin), and hated for its unfriendliness with Linux newbies. Thus, many flavors of Gentoo have been created including this highly capable one named Sabayon.Every now and then, I’m searching for a perfect Operating System worthy to replace my OpenSuse 10.1. I have chosen to try out Sabayon Linux as I have already used Gentoo before and was quite impressed with it. I downloaded the Sabayon x86 3.3b Mini Edition live CD then installed and tested it via VMWare Workstation. So here is my own view and assessment of this distro:
Test Machine Specs:
Board: Intel D101GGCL
Processor: 3 GHz Intel Pentium 4 with HT Technology
Hard Drive: Samsung 80GB with 10GB allocated to VM disk
Memory: 1.5GB 400 MHz DDR with 512MB allocated to VM memory
Graphics Card: On-board
Intro:
Sabayon is made in Italy and created by Fabio Erculiani. He named it after an Italian dessert called Zabaione. The reason behind this tasty name is yet unclear but Linux users’ appetite for Sabayon can’t be denied as it is currently ranked number 5 on Distrowatch.com. Sabayon’s main aim is to transform a computer into a powerful Gentoo Linux system in less than 5 minutes.
Installation:
The link to the download site for Sabayon Linux is here. There are variety of installers to chose from which includes the DVD and Mini Edition supporting processors with 32 and 64 bit architectures. However, I would recommend the DVD for beginners for a reason that I will disclose later on. Anyway, the installation on my VMware System using the Mini live CD was completed in about 15 minutes with a unique feature that will let you update the installer before you start. Thanks to Anaconda, only few easy steps were necessary for the installation. It would have been a different story if it was done in an old Gentoo way. After the installation, it rebooted smoothly with all virtual hardwares detected. The audio, floppy, cdrom, ethernet, and usb controllers are working well.
Look and Feel:
Sabayon is short of being artistic in this edition. Most themes and wallpapers included are part of KDE by default. They could have added a few extras. Though I like the default Sabayon theme, I'm not that much of a KDE fan. The only good part is that it comes with Beryl which can be easily enabled. So if you have a capable video card, then you are just a few clicks away to eye-candy insanity.
Package Management:
Now here's the sad part for the newbies; The mini edition doesn't come with adequate software applications installed off-the-shelf. There's no Gimp, AbiWord and OpenOffice, just to name a few. Even though you can use a graphical portage package manager with a funny name called Kuroo to add or maintain software in Sabayon, it is not as easy as you think compared with say Ubuntu, PCLinuxOS, or OpenSuse's package management systems. That is why I'm recommending the Live DVD installer for beginners because it is pre-installed with plenty of useful applications to choose from for free, of course.
Stability:
Gentoo is considered one of the most stable if not the most stable distro ever. I was not surprised that Sabayon Linux inherited its quality. Though I have not tried Sabayon long enough, I can already say that it can be reliable for a long period of time based on the initial tests I made which includes running several applications simultaneously and probing its hardware support. In addition, I was also very amazed with its speed. It is very fast indeed, with a start-up loading time faster than any other distro I've seen so far.
Conclusion:
Sabayon is certainly not for everyone. But because of its quality, versatility and many advanced features, it is undeniably worth a try. I would recommend Sabayon to Novice users and to those who are bored with their Ubuntu or PCLinuxOS distro. But for experts or advanced users, you may also utilize Sabayon as a Linux web server.
To those who are just migrating from Windows to Linux , in short extreme newbies, don't ever think of touching it. Sabayon may sound sweet, but when tasted it could lead to a bitter experience.
Yes I did try rev-rebuild, and it scrolled through a few hundred packages, and although I can't remember the error message at the moment, I know that it ended in error. I think the discouraging thing, is when users tell you to wait for the next dvd release and use that method to upgrade. My experience may be different from other users, however. I still think this distro shows a lot of promise.
The 3 times i tried to update everything all i got left was a hosed system after 2-3 days of compiling, reading stuff, trying various fixes, finally running the last etc-update, hoping it would be ok, only to see the system was broken at the next reboot.
I heard the latest release is better in that regard but haven't had the time to try it once again.
I know it compiles everything from source. I was talking about the slow update speed of the repositories. It takes too long to update the list of software from the repos.
Gentoo is hardly the "fastest" linux (one of the top I'm sure, but that crown belongs to others), and most certainly will not match the stability of a slackware or debian etch.
However, I think it is fair to say that the updating of this distribution is pretty poor and to say that most users recommend simply waiting for the next release to update something is a bit shocking!
You are doing the linux community a service with a review like this, its about time someone wrote something interesting!
In other side, Sabayon is a good boot CD for install Gentoo with an internet connection. I have trouble to drive my new Intel 4965agn wireless card under Gentoo Live[CD|DVD] 2007.0. At last, I use Sabayon LiveDVD to install it successfully. It also support ext4, that's good.
As for updating via the next DVD remember this. It might seem like an extreme comment but in the last year they released 6 stable releases (not including mini or business/professional editions or counting 32 and 64 as different). If they keep up that pace it means that every 3 months at most you should have a new distro (and to be fair there's no real need to update every single month.
I use Sabayon! i consider it the best distro, i also use arch, mandriva, tutoo ( a brazilian Gentoo) and Gentoo itself, but i enjoy so much Sabayon....
thei updatingm however, im much more difficult than gentoo, because the number of packages that is installed ih much higher.. Gentoo, you only install taht you use, butsabayon not. gentoo users said that sabayob uses binaries in the live cd,bu it is no so tru. all emerge packages is compiled.. Sabayon is a Gentoo, not Gentoo like!, but it is difficult to use! resuming, it is not for newbies,but is a great distro!
I reccomend to Sabayon users, do not run emerge --sync,or emerge world, or you my obtain many broken, blocked or masked packages. Emerge only that you use! even emerging open office, destroyed libraries!
But, if you enjoy gentoos, sabayon is the best!!!
I've downloaded and insalled the kde version and gnome. I like the gnome version better. My dvdburner is shot and I installed the iso from the harddrive using puppy linux to extract the livecd image and grub to boot it.. it was a lot of fun. I use dvdflick to convert downloaded avi's to playable dvd through wine. until now, slackware and slack derivatives were the only distros to run dvdflick beta 1.3.0.0 to my satisfaction. Sabayon is working great for me.