Loving Sabayon!

Well, I don't love the install. The DVD 3.3 Installer repeatedly returned errors during installation for a time, and the first time I got it through my system was so sluggish you would've thought I was using a Pentium II. Anyway, I finally got it installed and running properly, and it's incredible! This is the gold standard for plug-n-play/"just works" operating systems.

From the install, first of all, I already have every application I would download, which means I'm productive right away. I have yet to use emerge, but I might now (expect for updating applications and security updates) because the current configuration is superb. I did, of course, change the default theme over to a blue KDE default. Not a big fan of the burgendy and black! Anyway, here's what I've noticed:

• At first, everything was slow. But with every application launch, reboot, or any other action, I notice a speed improvement. Almost as though it's acquanting itself with my system. Sorta odd, but as long as it's going fast, I could care less.
• Fonts are beautiful. They render perfectly, smoothly, and are very readable still.
• Wireless is superb. Who knows why, but I can see about twice as many signals (as well as hop on twice as many open networks in my range) as I ever could with Ubuntu, PCLOS, Mint, etc. Wireless is now on par with my MacBook, and that's a big deal compared to former performance.
• DVDs! I read a review somewhere that Mandrive had the only DVD codec. Well, maybe they have the only legal one, but this one works excellently. I tried the AUD-DVD codecs with Automatix in Ubuntu, and it never worked as expected.
• Everything else I expect to work or usually have to configure is there for me. Audio codecs, iPod support, I mean everything. Not to mention that common actions are gradually getting "snappier" than they've ever been with other distros. Namely, Suspend to RAM, waking from suspend, mounting external media, etc.

Amazing! I'm Italian, so of course I expected an Italian would come up with the best Linux OS :^)

Sabayon's nice, yes, but in my opinion it's not worth using for anything more than a LiveCD. Why don't you try doing a normal Gentoo install, I'm sure it would be a lot faster than a generic i386 source distribution?

Also, I've heard some tales about Sabayon's portage not agreeing with updates, or something along those lines. I'd be wary when upgrading packages if I were you.

I have neither the time nor the dedication to get Gentoo running "just right." It seems pretty neat, but at this point I'm pleased with Sabayon.

ThinkBuntu said: I have neither the time nor the dedication to get Gentoo running "just right." It seems pretty neat, but at this point I'm pleased with Sabayon.

I like your icon. I just grabbed the i386 ISo of Sabayon last night, for use on my tower; I was planning to install it today, but I really have some work that should get done... but maybe I'll pretend to keep working on the laptop while the Sabayon install runs. ;) I'll post back with my thoughts here.

I'm really amazed by how this is working out. I'm used to Windows, Zenwalk, even Ubuntu getting incrementally slower with every boot, especially after changes have been made to the preinstalled "optimal" settings. With Sabayon, every action I take is executed quicker than the previous time. Boots just keep improving, OpenOffice is as fast as I've had it anywhere except Zenwalk, and KDE launches as quickly as it ever did in Arch.

I've ordered a DVD of this version from OSDisc. I'll be recommending this, not Ubuntu, to people coming to Linux with modern computers. I'm taking the more monolitihic version point of view until I understand Gentoo upgrades thoroughly, as I don't want to mess up my system any time soon. If everything works, and every tool I could want (except for some spare stuff I might build from source like Cinellara) came installed, why fiddle? But in the long run, I really want to use this to see some of Gentoo's potential without its infamous hassle.

I've given Sabayon another chance again. This is probably the fourth time I've installed it. I'm not sure why I gave up on it before. But I'm really going to give it a good chance this time. So far I'm very impressed. I've always wanted to try Gentoo but it always seemed so complicated and time consuming. KDE starts a lot faster than it did on Kubuntu. So far so good. I'll really know how I like it in a few more days.

FuturePilot said: I've given Sabayon another chance again. This is probably the fourth time I've installed it. I'm not sure why I gave up on it before. But I'm really going to give it a good chance this time. So far I'm very impressed. I've always wanted to try Gentoo but it always seemed so complicated and time consuming. KDE starts a lot faster than it did on Kubuntu. So far so good. I'll really know how I like it in a few more days.

OT: cool avatar.

;)z

I completely agree. Sabayon Linux was the easiest Linux OS that I ever came across. Sure it has some quirks that it needs to work out, but from what I see a lot less than any other OS I've tried.

I have a tip for all you planning on installing Sabayon though. Installing Sabayon parallel to Windows XP destroyed performance. The install was so unbelievably slow I almost gave up. However when I swapped out my HD to install it as the lone OS the install went through much quicker and it just seemed to rnso much better than before in a dual boot.

Now for the specifics: P4 2.26GHz 1.25Gb DDR-SDRAM 20gig primary 200gig slave 19" widescreen AND - the best part of all my 4.1 Boston Acoustics - they just don't make them like they used to...

mr32123 said: I completely agree. Sabayon Linux was the easiest Linux OS that I ever came across. Sure it has some quirks that it needs to work out, but from what I see a lot less than any other OS I've tried.

I have a tip for all you planning on installing Sabayon though. Installing Sabayon parallel to Windows XP destroyed performance. The install was so unbelievably slow I almost gave up. However when I swapped out my HD to install it as the lone OS the install went through much quicker and it just seemed to rnso much better than before in a dual boot.

Now for the specifics: P4 2.26GHz 1.25Gb DDR-SDRAM 20gig primary 200gig slave 19" widescreen AND - the best part of all my 4.1 Boston Acoustics - they just don't make them like they used to...

Me? Windows? The only computer I've ever owned with Windows on it was this ThinkPad, and it was wiped the day I bought it used.

RAV TUX said: OT: cool avatar.

;)z

Thanks RAV TUX:) It reminds me of the one in the title of this post. Lol

Sabayon keeps freezing up on me grrr:mad: It's such a nice distro, I'd hate to leave it.

I tried sabayon 3.26 and 3.3. On my box it is running nice but compared to gentoo clearly slower.

Funny, extolling the virtues of Sabayon @ an Ubuntu forum. Right now I'm trying to help a guy out and install Sabayon on a Mac Book Pro. I guess when I get the monster on a dvd and see it for myself, I'll withhold judgement. It's going to be tough to beat Ubuntu though. I have a Dell L400 with no way to install anything except via PXE network installation. Ubuntu does PPC installations for pre-Intel Macs, so how can Sabayon be better than this ?

Just thinking out loud here, but why would anyone want to run anything but OS X Tiger or upcominmg Leopard on a MBP ? You pay $ 3+ K for it and scrap the OS X ? And if and when the computer dies, your warranty is clearly voided. Apple doesn't want to know you as it is should their hardware die on you. When you show up with that kind of a problem on a brand new Crapple, you might as well throw that notebook in the ocean for the saltwater to reclaim to it's baser elements.

Anyhow, I would think Sabayon would lighten their installation and make the repositories available to pick and choose. 3+ GB of software is nice, so is driver support, but Ubuntu supports my Atheros Orinoco Gold ABG and Netgear MA401RA Rev D for wireless, not to mention everything else I've thrown at for hardware. Again, how does Sabayon improve on this as supplanting Ubuntu ? I dread having to go thru the download process of Sabayon, both initially and for subsequent upgrades, so much I killed the dl last night after seeing it would take 9+ hours. That said, the screenshots of Sabayon are Vista-like, only it's Linux. Heck with a dvd iso, you might as well dl Vista Jack Sparrow/buccaneer style instead and get the real thing ? (j/k about that Vista dl ;) ) Oh and the dvd iso thing is just so unwieldy, your basically burning a hdd drive and then trying to install an OS from a dvd. It almost makes as much sense as driving a school bus to deliver pizza's.

jgcamp99 said: Funny, extolling the virtues of Sabayon @ an Ubuntu forum. Right now I'm trying to help a guy out and install Sabayon on a Mac Book Pro. I guess when I get the monster on a dvd and see it for myself, I'll withhold judgement. It's going to be tough to beat Ubuntu though. I have a Dell L400 with no way to install anything except via PXE network installation. Ubuntu does PPC installations for pre-Intel Macs, so how can Sabayon be better than this ?

Just thinking out loud here, but why would anyone want to run anything but OS X Tiger or upcominmg Leopard on a MBP ? You pay $ 3+ K for it and scrap the OS X ? And if and when the computer dies, your warranty is clearly voided. Apple doesn't want to know you as it is should their hardware die on you. When you show up with that kind of a problem on a brand new Crapple, you might as well throw that notebook in the ocean for the saltwater to reclaim to it's baser elements.

Anyhow, I would think Sabayon would lighten their installation and make the repositories available to pick and choose. 3+ GB of software is nice, so is driver support, but Ubuntu supports my Atheros Orinoco Gold ABG and Netgear MA401RA Rev D for wireless, not to mention everything else I've thrown at for hardware. Again, how does Sabayon improve on this as supplanting Ubuntu ? I dread having to go thru the download process of Sabayon, both initially and for subsequent upgrades, so much I killed the dl last night after seeing it would take 9+ hours. That said, the screenshots of Sabayon are Vista-like, only it's Linux. Heck with a dvd iso, you might as well dl Vista Jack Sparrow/buccaneer style instead and get the real thing ? (j/k about that Vista dl ;) ) Oh and the dvd iso thing is just so unwieldy, your basically burning a hdd drive and then trying to install an OS from a dvd. It almost makes as much sense as driving a school bus to deliver pizza's. I'm going to go out on a limb and recommend Pardus 2007.2 beta if hardware recognition is a concern. Sabayon is great, but a pain in the *** to maintain, which is why I no longer use it. Pardus is very promising, and I was impressed by its combination of a clean install and hardware compatibility, unlike MEPIS which just seems to jam every driver around onto the install.

I won't candy coat it for Sabayon, I registered for their forum, my userid & password doesn't even work. The live dvd takes forever to load, so much that I killed the live dvd before a desktop showed up. The Ubuntu live cdrom takes a little bit of time. If Sabayon or any other distro wants to compete with Ubuntu, making that live boot as lite as possible is the way to go. Canonical has the model that is most logical and functional. Compiz/Beryl should be a post install task for those with video cards to run it. I downloaded FreeBSD 6.2, like you and Sabayon, I found it to be a pita to set up, much less maintain. I enjoy learning, even like a challenge, but FreeBSD was just too much as well.

My co-worker gave up on Sabayon today, then realized OS X Tiger is a very developed OS. If these distros are going to make you DL 3.2 GB's, they might as well have a lite install and use the directories on the dvd as repositories for post install customizations. People want to be up and running in a short time. Learning is an on-going process. Something that takes forever to load is counter to that install instantaneously and be up and running.

With Ubuntu, I installed it, got it customized to what default visuals are capable, then went Compiz and ultimately Beryl. The steps were a progression, I appreciated each along the way and the process from going from Mesa to Beryl isn't that difficult with this forum and support tool. For me, Ubuntu has no peer in terms of Linux distros. It's the right amount of tradeoff for effort vs results across the board. Thank you Ubuntu/Canonical, this distro simply gets better and better. I see 7.10 on this system within hours of it's release.

What exactly is such a pain to maintain ?

I installed 3.3, customised it a bit to my liking, installed the odd app on occasion and have had to nothing to 'maintain' it. If anything it is the distro that I have had longest on my pc with the least amount of reinstalls (0).

Is it maybe a portage/emerge thing ?

mips said:

What exactly is such a pain to maintain ?

I installed 3.3, customised it a bit to my liking, installed the odd app on occasion and have had to nothing to 'maintain' it. If anything it is the distro that I have had longest on my pc with the least amount of reinstalls (0).

Is it maybe a portage/emerge thing ? It's a combination of the time-consuming (although very useful) Portage, in addition to the inability to do an emerge -u world (or whatever the command is), as is strongly advised by LxNay and the Sabayon devs.

The Sabayon Devs have/were working on a project called Entropy. This will/would be a binary package manager. I dont know the status of the project anymore, but I think they are still working on this, as I think they know that in order to take Sabayon into the primetime, they must have this option handily available for installs and upgrades. Portage is OK. Its cumbersome and updates are an absolute nightmare! Just try and emerge uaD world sometime :(

FuturePilot said: Thanks RAV TUX:) It reminds me of the one in the title of this post. Lol

Sabayon keeps freezing up on me grrr:mad: It's such a nice distro, I'd hate to leave it.

i was running it tonight, and it wound up freezing on me too.(twice) and portato didnt work at all. first impressions mean alot. i love the way it looks, and the general feel, but it wont be my main OS just yet. i absolutely love it as a live cd though. my favorite by far.

All this talk about Sabayon and I finally had to try it for myself. I downloaded the 386-64 3.3b mini CD and burned it to a CD. It gets passed the "Desktop Acceleration" screen and then just a blank screen and system freezes! So much for stable! BTW - I must have downloaded and tried at least 50 different Linux distros in the past year. I keep ubuntu and XP as my main OS. I really can't deal with the clutter of KDE, although sometimes GNOME leaves me wanting more...