Language Selection

English French German Italian Portuguese Spanish

Another Sabayon Linux 3.2 Look (from a non-Gentoo user)

Filed under
Linux

My background over the years has largely been with Mandrake/Mandriva Linux, and it's fully grown and mature (no longer a child), PCLinuxOS. Yes, I've dabbled with several other distributions along the way, but I always return to these two (Mandriva on the server, PCLinuxOS on the desktop).

I don't know a whole lot about Sabayon/Gentoo's command line package manager Portage, and the relatively recent GUI front end to it called Kuroo. So, if I do continue with this distribution (and I think I will), I'm going to have to do some learning after all.

Although there will be some overlap, I will try to not repeat the material in Rob Williams excellent review (which is linked to from tuxmachines main page).

Although you can run Sabayon Linux as a Live CD, I went directly to installing Sabayon Linux X86_64 on my main test machine. Sabayon Linux uses a modified version of the Red Hat Anaconda installer, and you get a choice of Text or GUI Installation. I chose the GUI install, and away I went. If you have an NVidia Graphic video card, X starts up with the latest NVidia binary drivers. (Yes, I know, many folks will not like that Sabayon Linux contains NVidia's closed drivers). You have your choice of desktop during install: KDE, Gnome, XFCE, Enlightenment 16, and Fluxbox Geeky. I chose KDE. The installation process was completely trouble free.

After installation, the first boot of Sabayon Linux was impressive--everything worked. I have no unusual devices on my test box--but I do have an older 15-inch LCD Monitor that is very fussy about sync rates. I usually have to start up in console mode and edit the xorg.conf file to get X-windows to start. Not this time. I plugged in (at separate times) a PS2 connected keyboard, and a USB keyboard on this box--both work great. Sound works. Networking works. USB flash drives work. This is dead simple stuff.

Sabayon Linux graphics are orange, yellow, and black--and are not to my taste. So I proceed to "blueify" my machine. I read up a bit on the emerge command, and install my favorite KDE windows decoration style (ThinKeramik), and my favorite widget style.

The Sabayon Linux start button in the KDE Panel brings up the SUSE menu structure. Not my cup of tea at all, but if you right click on it, you get a popup menu choice that includes "Switch to KDE Menu Style". I do so, and I get the the K-icon and a standard KDE menu system. I install some of my favorite wallpapers into /usr/kde/share/wallpapers, and adjust my desktop accordingly.

I have rarely found Linux distros that have fonts that look as good as those on Mandriva/PCLinuxOS, and Sabayon's fonts don't. I fuss with different fonts and antialiasing, and finally arrive at fonts that are adequate.

So with basic eye-candy stuff settled, time to try the fancy AIGLX or XGL desktop acceleration effects. In the KDE menu system, under the "Settings" menu choice, there are three programs that affect this:

  • Acceleration Manager - This is where you select your Desktop Acceleration Mode
    • No Desktop Acceleration
    • AIGLX Desktop Acceleration
      or
    • XGL Desktop Acceleration
    • The Acceleration Manager explains the two modes of acceleration as follows:

      • AIGLX
        Where supported, has better performance than XGL and uses less memory. It is the best choice for performance and stability.
      • XGL
        XGL is more compatible with ATI Graphics Cards than AIGLX, but it is slower, does not support Dual Monitor nor OpenGL games on top of itself.
  • Beryl Settings Manager - This is where you tie the various acceleration effects to keyboard and mouse control. The degree of customization and number of effects is breathtaking.
  • Emerald Theme Manager - And here, you can select a theme for your window decorations that are applied in accelerated mode.

So, what's my take on this? It's getting very close to the time when you can live in AIGLX all the time. Under AIGLX, I note a very slight degradation in the fonts (almost not noticable unless you are looking for it), and GLX based games run a little slower. I like the rotating cube as a desktop organizer, and it is somewhat integrated into the 1-4 KDE 1-4 desktop choices in the panel. With the three programs, Sabayon makes it easy to switch on and off, and easy to configure and customize.

Sabayon Linux specific documentation on their web site is sparse and incomplete. To continue much furthur with this distro, I'll have to go to the Gentoo web site. However, KDE's "Konversation" IRC chat program appears on the desktop by default (named "Get Live Help") for some real time assistance.

Despite the sparse documentation and the not so great fonts, I'm very impressed with Sabayon Linux 3.2. Its performance and flexibility are excellent, and the DVD comes with a wide range of software. I encourage everyone to give it a try--even if you have never have tried Gentoo.

Comment viewing options

Select your preferred way to display the comments and click "Save settings" to activate your changes.

I liked it too, but ...

I actually installed 3.05 and, again, opted for Kde. Now, I would choose Xfce. I also have been a Mandriva user, now PCLinuxOS.

I installed the 64 bit version and thereafter found compiling software quite a chore. The installed Firefox would not launch so I unemerged it and somehow emerged a different version which launched. I could not complete an emerge of OpenOffice.

I also was unimpressed by the fonts. The main issue for me, however, was the sheer amount of time involved in the process of adding software. I just did not have the dedication to persevere in the face of repeated failures.

For seekers only

RE: I liked it too, but

If you're referring to the 3.0b version in your post, version 3.2 is greatly improved. Yes, when you install new software, it does take a great deal of time to both download and compile and install. That's simply the intent of a Gentoo Linux based distribution.

I was surprised, however, at the sheer number of packages installed from the DVD, so Sabayon Linux 3.2 doesn't lack for much.

Since I'm a high school computer science teacher, I downloaded and installed all the Ruby programming language packages with emerge (I teach Ruby to my beginning Programming students). That wasn't too bad.

I downloaded the most recent 64-bit OpenOffice.org release from Pavel Janik's ftp openoffice site as a compressed RPM. Sabayon does have rpm on it, and OpenOffice.org 2.1 installed and ran great.

I do hope they spiff up the fonts in the next release.

Great review!

I agree with you gfranken completely. The theme is not for everyone. Maybe they should include a darker colored theme in addition to please everyone. Of course it's not too difficult to do it by yourself, but they do a quality job on their themes...

"Gentoo made easy" is not a common slogan, but it is for Sabayon. Even though it's based on that distro, it's an easier way to learn the ins and outs, instead of downloading Gentoo proper and diving in heads first.

I think SL is going to grow, it's a very polished OS.

RE: Great review!

Thanks for the kind words. As a non Gentoo user I couldn't go into much more depth. Sabayon Linux 3.2 is one of the few distros in the last few years I've left on a machine for more than a couple of days.

I do intend to do a genuine Gentoo install next Summer, just for my own learning and edification.

Yes, SL well deserves a look from anyone testing distros.

help

I AM USING MS WINDOWS XP FOR 3YEARS. BUT LAST WEEK I GOT A CD OF SUSE LINUX. THEN I AM INTRESTED IN LINUX SO I COLLECTED NINE LINUX, LAST ONE I GOT WAS SABAYON 3.26 , ITS REALLY WONDERFULL AND AMAZING. NOW I AM USING SABAYON IN MY DESKTOP AND IN MY LAPTOP. BUT I CANNOT CONNECT TO INTERNET USING MY DIAL UP MODEM. I THING ITS THE ONLY DRAWBACK. IT HAVE HIGH PERFORMENCE IN MULTIMEDIA. BUT TO FULLFILL MY NEED I HAVE TO BE ONLINE..... PLEASE HELP TO CONNECT TO INTERNET.........

I HAVE NOKIA 6030 AND CA-45 DATACABLE CAN I CONNECT MY PHONE TO PC IN SABAYON

IF THESE TWO NEEDS ARE ARE SATISFIED I CAN REMOVE WINDOWS XP FROM MY COMPUTER

More in Tux Machines

digiKam 7.7.0 is released

After three months of active maintenance and another bug triage, the digiKam team is proud to present version 7.7.0 of its open source digital photo manager. See below the list of most important features coming with this release. Read more

Dilution and Misuse of the "Linux" Brand

Samsung, Red Hat to Work on Linux Drivers for Future Tech

The metaverse is expected to uproot system design as we know it, and Samsung is one of many hardware vendors re-imagining data center infrastructure in preparation for a parallel 3D world. Samsung is working on new memory technologies that provide faster bandwidth inside hardware for data to travel between CPUs, storage and other computing resources. The company also announced it was partnering with Red Hat to ensure these technologies have Linux compatibility. Read more

today's howtos

  • How to install go1.19beta on Ubuntu 22.04 – NextGenTips

    In this tutorial, we are going to explore how to install go on Ubuntu 22.04 Golang is an open-source programming language that is easy to learn and use. It is built-in concurrency and has a robust standard library. It is reliable, builds fast, and efficient software that scales fast. Its concurrency mechanisms make it easy to write programs that get the most out of multicore and networked machines, while its novel-type systems enable flexible and modular program constructions. Go compiles quickly to machine code and has the convenience of garbage collection and the power of run-time reflection. In this guide, we are going to learn how to install golang 1.19beta on Ubuntu 22.04. Go 1.19beta1 is not yet released. There is so much work in progress with all the documentation.

  • molecule test: failed to connect to bus in systemd container - openQA bites

    Ansible Molecule is a project to help you test your ansible roles. I’m using molecule for automatically testing the ansible roles of geekoops.

  • How To Install MongoDB on AlmaLinux 9 - idroot

    In this tutorial, we will show you how to install MongoDB on AlmaLinux 9. For those of you who didn’t know, MongoDB is a high-performance, highly scalable document-oriented NoSQL database. Unlike in SQL databases where data is stored in rows and columns inside tables, in MongoDB, data is structured in JSON-like format inside records which are referred to as documents. The open-source attribute of MongoDB as a database software makes it an ideal candidate for almost any database-related project. This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you the step-by-step installation of the MongoDB NoSQL database on AlmaLinux 9. You can follow the same instructions for CentOS and Rocky Linux.

  • An introduction (and how-to) to Plugin Loader for the Steam Deck. - Invidious
  • Self-host a Ghost Blog With Traefik

    Ghost is a very popular open-source content management system. Started as an alternative to WordPress and it went on to become an alternative to Substack by focusing on membership and newsletter. The creators of Ghost offer managed Pro hosting but it may not fit everyone's budget. Alternatively, you can self-host it on your own cloud servers. On Linux handbook, we already have a guide on deploying Ghost with Docker in a reverse proxy setup. Instead of Ngnix reverse proxy, you can also use another software called Traefik with Docker. It is a popular open-source cloud-native application proxy, API Gateway, Edge-router, and more. I use Traefik to secure my websites using an SSL certificate obtained from Let's Encrypt. Once deployed, Traefik can automatically manage your certificates and their renewals. In this tutorial, I'll share the necessary steps for deploying a Ghost blog with Docker and Traefik.