factorQ.net

In the forums I had said this:

2. Sabayon is pretty awesome. based on Gentoo, it is definitely powerful, and runs well even on this junky-ish laptop. Entropy is well laid out and handles updates and package dependencies. Also, emerge/portage is available for packages not contained in the Sabayon repositories. Pros: fast. flexible. stable, for the most part. everything works as it should. Cons: have had a couple of bugs, but definitely nothing major.

I figure it’s about time I go a little more in-depth about this great distro.  I’ll have to come back later and add some screenshots,but this will have to do for now.

I installed Sabayon 4.2 on my Sony Vaio laptop–nothing special about it, pretty afterage as far as hardware, nothing particularly performance about it.  Actually it’s seen some abuse:  hdd replaced from the wife dropping it, been through a few power cords.  Most recently cut the power jack out, extended some 18 gauge wire out the back and ran it into a Phoenix connector, and ran the PS cord into the opposite sex Phoenix…pretty ghetto, but it works.

Anyway! This was my test  machine.  As pretty much everyone else who has reviewed this has noted, the default LiveCD option boots up with rock music playing.  Odd…but interesting.  Once booted up (which takes a pretty average amount of time, but definitely not fast) there is a vast array of software at your disposal. Not only that , but the wireless worked fine after it was set up with SSID and passcode.  As a liveCD option, this is pretty good.

So then I went for the graphical install.  There is an “update installer” button, which is supposed to alleviate bugs and things in case things have changed since the .iso was downloaded — pretty nifty idea.  I did not update the installer, and proceeded.
Sabayon uses a modified version of Fedora‘s Anaconda installer, I believe.  It was really similar to that, if it was not.  Everything went along smoothly, nothing really to report there. Oh, except for the several choices of desktop environments and a media center option, you can definitely have it your way! (I chose the Gnome desktop environment)

Once the system was installed, rebooted, and logged into it was a clean desktop with only a few icons on it–2 or 3 of them being for support.  One for media center. And another as a link to “World of Goo” game demo — quite a fun game, I might add.

The standard applications were present (versions are as of right now, after updates):

• Firefox 3.5.1
• gParted 0.4.5 (libparted 1.8.8)
• OOo  3.1.0
• gimp 2.6.6
• Brasero 2.26.3
• Pidgin 2.5.8
• xchat 2.8.6

The kernel version was 2.6.29 I think…but I can’t be sure of the exact version.  I know it is at 29 because I noticed my sidux install is at .30.

edit: It IS a 2.6.29 kernel…but with Sabayon modifications, hence the output below:

# uname -a
Linux Hermes 2.6.29-sabayon #1 SMP Mon Jul 20 13:34:20 UTC 2009 i686 Genuine Intel(R) CPU T2050 @ 1.60GHz GenuineIntel GNU/Linux

Based on Gentoo, Sabayon makes use of Portage–or emerge on the command line.  This works well,but that’s not all…  Sabayon also has its own package manager–Entropy (or equo on the command line).  It is BAD news to use them both in conjunction frequently, although it is possible: this is likely to happen in the event that a package you are looking for is not in the Sabayon repositories– I had to get Alpine through emerge, equo only had Pine.  The graphical interface for equo is called Sulfur, and it works very similarly to the way Synaptic works with apt-get.  It is very easy to use, and prompts you when updates are available via a panel applet.  Entropy can also alert about GLSIs, or Gentoo security advisories, and applies the fixes from upstream (using Sulfur’s “Security” tab).

In conclusion:
All in all, I am pretty impressed with Sabayon.  It is called the “bloated distro” because of everything that is included…and a LOT is included.  However, I think in spite of this it runs well, programs are fast, and it can do a lot right off of the install.  I have been using it now on my Vaio for a couple of months (dual booting with sidux).  I like it, and because it works so well, it may be my “stable” distro for the laptop, while I keep hopping around and installing others beside  it.  Although, so far sidux is doing very well also.

That’s about all I have to say about Sabayon.  Get it here:  SabayonLinux.org

My next review will most likely be sidux, being that is what I have had installed/used the next to longest after Sabayon.

Screenshots:

This is a screenshot of my standard desktop, set up how I like it:

Entropy / Sulfur: