Sabayon Linux

[C!oud]

If anyone has seen some of my more recent posts they would see that I have been looking to branch out from Ubuntu. Not like branching out to openSUSE, PCLinuxOS, Fedora and etc etc (which I have all tried) but more like branching out to Gentoo, Slackware, Arch, or Debian and start learning more about linux. While browsing the all mighty distrowatch site I came across sabayon which is a gentoo based os. My question is does anyone here on the forums use it as their primary OS and is it really worth checking out? So far it looks interesting enough and I have talked to some people who recommended it ,but will it perform?

[Playa1313]

I tried it once. Quite a nice looking operating system. However, at the time I was messing around with many linux distros ("hopping"), so I only installed it in a vmware and ended up overwriting it with another one.

I did this about a month and a half ago during one of their beta loops. I only started linux at the beginning of March, so I might have been scared by the spritz package manager and missing my apt.

I would say if you like Fedora, OpenSUSE, (have not tried Gentoo), or something like OpenGEU (enlightenment, but seemed similarly built to me); then you will probably like this.

Now that I'm typing this i'm going to download it and put it in a virtual machine again :D

[mips]

Sabayon is nice. I used it for a good many months before switching to Arch.

I would say it is well worth a try. Check out the differences between the full dvd & the miniEd.

[MONODA]

in my experience, sabayon is quite buggy, arch and debian are much better.

[C!oud]

Thanks for the replies I think I'll try it out.

in my experience, sabayon is quite buggy, arch and debian are much better.
I was afraid of this since on their website they described it as being on the bleeding edge which I am totally fine with but as long as it's stable so I'll install it in virtualbox first in order to test it out.

[wolfen69]

i absolutely love it as a live cd, but as an installed OS? no thanks.

[RumorsOfWar]

I used Sabayon full time for about a year.
If you know a lot about compiling and libraries its the best, but I just want to get stuff done.
Its got potential, its cutting edge, but I found myself tinkering with the OS more than just using it.

[Antman]

but I found myself tinkering with the OS more than just using it.
same here.... I had the same issue with Sidux and Fedora too.

[handy]

I used 3.4e & f, versions for about 6 months all together. I really like Sabayon, it worked well on my hardware & is still the only distro' to handle my very difficult nVidia XFX AGP 7950GT card properly - did it both in liveDVD mode & when installed!

Interestingly Sabayon does not do it by turning off AGP in xorg.conf? I don't know how they handle it in Sabayon? I sent the setup info' for this XFX card to Alberto Milone once, never heard anything about it from him though? He is very busy.

Anyway, Sabayon is great imho.

[wolfen69]

I used Sabayon full time for about a year.
If you know a lot about compiling and libraries its the best, but I just want to get stuff done.
Its got potential, its cutting edge, but I found myself tinkering with the OS more than just using it.

yeah, i kind of know what you mean. i had it installed for a few days and finally gave up on it. it may be cutting edge, but that edge also bleeds. i couldnt stand the package management. to me, nothing beats apt-get.

anyway, i still like to fire up the sabayon live cd and use it for a few hours and play with compiz and stuff and maybe a couple games. it's a good change of pace distro for me. but mostly i use ubuntu and once in a while Mandriva.

[kazuya]

It was one of the first distros to come with Beryl and compriz and have it work near flawlessly. I had the WOW effect when i first used it.

It was gorgeous and feature rich. They were ahead of most in their 64bit implementation - However, as mentioned, the packagemanager, Kuruoo was a pain. It took too long to install applications. If you did not know what you were doing or was not patient to read instructions, you could make mistakes. The distro was forgiving and was one of the easiest ways to have gentoo running on your PC.

I highly respected lxnay and co. Those guys were geniuses, very helpful and would assist if u asked. I learnt alot using that distro, but in the end, wanted something easy to manage and control and most especialy install without long compile times.

I would give credit where it is due. Sabayon was ahead of its times a year ago when I used it. And compile times is not an issue sometimes as almost all apps and Desktop environments are present in the DVD version.

[handy]

I never bother with Beryl & Compiz, unnecessary overhead imho.

I know 3D desktop rocks other's boats, which is fine... :-)

[C!oud]

I downloaded both cd and dvd version and the DVD full edition was just way too bloated so I installed the mini edition and installed gnome afterwards. I see what you guys mean with the package managing apt-get is definitely way easier to use but they have a lot of good documentation so it's just a matter of sitting down and reading through it all. I kinda get the feeling that it's also slower than apt-get. Everything has worked out of the box so far though so I'm happy and considering as a replacement of ubuntu.

[Antman]

I kinda get the feeling that it's also slower than apt-get. Everything has worked out of the box so far though so I'm happy and considering as a replacement of ubuntu.
Version 3.5 (currently in 3rd beta) may rock even more. Details (http://www.sabayonlinux.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=60&t=13529)

[handy]

Yes, 3.5 will have Entropy, a binary package manager that has 7000 packages available in each of 32 & 64 repo's at this stage.

It will be interesting to see how Entropy works, I expect it to be very fast, as fast as Arch's pacman, yoaurt or tupac, time will tell. I suspect that the Arch system's package management simplicity & speed may well have been an inspiration for Entropy.

I'm waiting for the final release of 3.5 before I put Sabayon back on a drive for another look.

[Antman]

I'm waiting for the final release of 3.5 before I put Sabayon back on a drive for another look.
+1
Yeah, this release will spark my interest in Sabayon again (at least just to play with and test). If it plays nice, I may install it on my Ubuntu box.

[handy]

+1
Yeah, this release will spark my interest in Sabayon again (at least just to play with and test). If it plays nice, I may install it on my Ubuntu box.

I have a machine with drive draws in it & I've got some old drives, so it is a convenient way to check out an OS/distro'.

I find it hard to imagine anything taking me away from Arch, though I do have high hopes for Haiku which has finally reached alpha... :-)

[C!oud]

I just upgraded to 3.5 beta and it's a lot better with entropy. Spritz is just so much easier to use than portato although downloading the packages is still slower than Ubuntu. Ran into a few snags though, after updating my system it will no longer boot up and I'm having a hard time editing the grub.conf so I can boot into Ubuntu and Windows but I'm not ready to give up yet just need to sit down and fiddle with it a bit more.

[handy]

I just upgraded to 3.5 beta and it's a lot better with entropy. Spritz is just so much easier to use than portato although downloading the packages is still slower than Ubuntu. Ran into a few snags though, after updating my system it will no longer boot up and I'm having a hard time editing the grub.conf so I can boot into Ubuntu and Windows but I'm not ready to give up yet just need to sit down and fiddle with it a bit more.

I use an Arch install CD & chroot when I need to edit an otherwise inaccessible partition:

mkdir /mnt/PARTITION (sda3 is a good bet when booting from the Arch install CD)
mount /dev/sda3 /mnt/sda3
chroot /mnt/sda3 /bin/bash

The above works for me, but I do think it can be done better.

[C!oud]

I use an Arch install CD & chroot when I need to edit an otherwise inaccessible partition.

It can probably be done more elegantly than this, if so, someone please show us? I may have even done it more elegantly than this, but I unfortunately tend to forget some things... ;-) :

mkdir /mnt/PARTITION (sda3 is a good bet when booting from the Arch install CD)
mount /dev/sda3 /mnt/sda3
chroot /mnt/sda3 /bin/bash

The above works for me, but I do think it can be done better.

I fixed it using the Sabayon liveDVD so I'm writing this in Ubuntu right now. Now if I can only get Sabayon to start working again......

[iamkrazee]

For that very first question.. if there are any users using sabayon as a primary OS, then here's me into that list, sadly the first one to say but not ashamed at all.

Guys you have to look at this distro as an emerging child with some great deal of potential. Sure you like Ubuntu's package manager better than Sabayon's (well I do too) but the huge difference in Ubuntu's case is the inheritance. Ubuntu uses its mother-distro's apt, while Sabayon is using portage alongwith the under-development Entropy. Spritz I personally liked just as much as I like Adept (not close to synaptic but still).

Also, I'm a KDE guy, and I think for any KDE person, this is the BEST distro to go for. PCLOS is good too but then no x64. Not that it makes a huge difference but it does that in my head. Everything is painless, audio-video codecs, 3D effects. Especially considering that I live in a country where internet is not so widely spread, people think before connecting... there's a good chance they wont connect at all "just to get some packages" They'd rather download a one time download BIG ISO that gives just about everything they'll ever need. And that IMHO is provided ONLY by Sabayon.

[iamkrazee]

I just upgraded to 3.5 beta and it's a lot better with entropy. Spritz is just so much easier to use than portato although downloading the packages is still slower than Ubuntu. Ran into a few snags though, after updating my system it will no longer boot up and I'm having a hard time editing the grub.conf so I can boot into Ubuntu and Windows but I'm not ready to give up yet just need to sit down and fiddle with it a bit more.

Considered re-installing grub from Sabayon LiveDVD?

[C!oud]

Considered re-installing grub from Sabayon LiveDVD?

I did and managed to be able to boot into Ubuntu but it keeps giving me grub error 15 when trying to boot into windows. The biggest problem though is that I can't boot up my Sabayon installation. Well it boots and then comes into the login screen for about a second then the screen goes black and goes into verbose mode saying error this file was not found (not exactly sure wrote it down somewhere if I can find it again.....). Then it puts me into a command line login and won't let me start any kind of GUI.

[buntunub]

I used Sabayon for a long time, and it really was my first real foray into Linux, so I have some knowledge of it, and even more of Gentoo. Sabayon reminds me of a massive house of glass. Beautiful in concept, one cant help but look at it for a while in wonder. Then, along comes some kid with a small rock and it all comes crashing down! One can say the same about Gentoo, although it is more like a thatch house than a house of glass. Now, one CAN turn that thatch or glass house into solid brick if you really want to put the countless hundreds of hours of blood, sweat, and tears into it, but with Ubuntu, PCLos, MEPIS, OpenSUSE, and LinuxMINT, your house comes preconfigured in flavors of solid grey stone, marble, or brick. With a small amount of effort, one can even upgrade those into solid Iron!

[iamkrazee]

I did and managed to be able to boot into Ubuntu but it keeps giving me grub error 15 when trying to boot into windows. The biggest problem though is that I can't boot up my Sabayon installation. Well it boots and then comes into the login screen for about a second then the screen goes black and goes into verbose mode saying error this file was not found (not exactly sure wrote it down somewhere if I can find it again.....). Then it puts me into a command line login and won't let me start any kind of GUI.

I don't think I can explain this very well, for one I don't even understand what's wrong because there's really a bunch of unrelated troubles. But the last one is definitely KDM. I've seen that, switching to GDM helps. See if that helps. And as for the grub error, I think you've created some partition BEFORE your windows drive, sabayon tried to use the windows path set by ubuntu kernel which should actually be changed in sabayon's grub. Which grub do you get when you boot?