Anyone tried Sabayon?

[fredilan]

Sabayon linux is the distro Beryl integrates with. It is based on the Gentoo distro which makes it more flexible and costumizable. You using this distro? Please do comment on it.

[smolloy]

I'm using it as my main workstation at home. It also runs my webserver (see my sig), and an ssh server so I can use it while at work.

It's a *really* pretty distro. It's also very impressive. It works as a liveDVD that can be installed, and when I first booted the DVD it automatically detected my Nvidia card and installed the drivers -- imagine my surprise when the Nvidia logo popped up on my screen without any effort on my part! The desktop has an "update installer" button that updates the installer via portage (I think). Once you run that, you run the installer, and it asks the usual questions (time zone, partitions, bootloader config, etc.), and then installs.

It's based on Gentoo, but the installer just transfers binaries onto the disk, instead of compiling everything like gentoo. This has the benefit of a fast install, but the drawback that "emerge world" doesn't work smoothly. The fact that it's based on Gentoo means that you get access to the portage tree -- in my opinion, "emerge" is one of the best package managers available.

Beryl worked with no problem for me on the liveDVD. On the installed version, it's screwed up a couple of times (the KDE menus became unresponsive requiring me to log out and back in again -- I didn't need to reboot).

Sabayon has a very fast update time. Version 3.3 only came out in march (I think), and 3.4 is coming out at the end of June. The installer has a brilliant update option that allows you to update to the next version without trashing your /home or /etc directories.

Note that this prides itself on being a bleeding edge distro, and as such is not as stable as a debian or suse system (and doesn't claim to be). It is for people (like me) who like eye-candy, cool multimedia apps, and all the joys of Gentoo without the pain of the install process. If this sounds like you, the go for it, but if you need a system that will be stable for months at a time, you might want to go with something else.

Personally, I love it!

[tampa]

I don´t like Sabayon. I´ve tried it, and I think there are too much software and sensless things. And if I want to use an gentoo, then I´ll use gentoo and not sabayon.

Beryl and so on can I install on Gentoo, too. Also there are hundrets of easy-to-use Distros. Installing Beryl on Arch Linux takes 10 Minutes.

[budman7]

I have a hp dv6000 laptop that Sabayon 3.4 loop 2 runs great on.
The bcm43xx module works great on this machine.
This laptop uses pci-e for the broadcomm chip, which is not supported by other distros without a patch.

I also have Sabayon 3.3 on my desktop, and wireless works great there too using the madwifi driver.
Nvidia drivers were installed on both machines, beryl works great.

The only problem I have encountered is when I attempt to do an "emerge -u world". To many conflicting packages are installed.

[smolloy]

The only problem I have encountered is when I attempt to do an "emerge -u world". To many conflicting packages are installed.

Yeah, that's an issue with this distro. I found a link to a tutorial that explains how to do this for a fresh installation, but my installation was far from fresh when I discovered it, so I decided not to risk it. Maybe next time though.

The fast release cycle (3.4 is due in a month) and the update tool that doesn't trash your /home, /etc or /*/local, means that this isn't such a problem. It's only necessary to install security-related updates, and glsa-check does this for you.

[devils casper]

Yeah, that's an issue with this distro. I found a link to a tutorial that explains how to do this for a fresh installation, but my installation was far from fresh when I discovered it, so I decided not to risk it. Maybe next time though.

Hi smolloy

could you post that link here. i am using Sabayon for last three days and i think its a fresh installation till now.
i tried Sabayon a few months back too but it was very slow ( esp. boot time and i hate slow boot ), and removed it.
installed again and trying to tweak it a bit to increase performance.

[smolloy]

could you post that link here. i am using Sabayon for last three days and i think its a fresh installation till now.

Here you go
www.sabayonlinux.org :: View topic - My Unofficial Guide to a Stable System World Update

Note that it's not an official write-up, and the author reminds you many times that you may hose your system and he will take no responsibility! Proceed at your own risk!

Also, make sure to read down the thread a bit as there are quite a few nice hints and tips.

i tried Sabayon a few months back too but it was very slow ( esp. boot time and i hate slow boot ), and removed it.
installed again and trying to tweak it a bit to increase performance.

Let me know how you get on with tweaking. I'd be interested in doing that as well.