Sabayon is a Gentoo-based GNU/Linux distro with binary package installation. That is another way of saying that you can install a Gentoo-based Linux operating system without having to compile packages from source.
Origin - Home Page: Italy - Sabayon
Desktop: KDE (default), Gnome, Xfce, Fluxbox, and 3D desktops (Beryl, Compiz, and Metisse)
Price: Free and Open Source
Installer: Sabayon may be installed using a Live CD or Live DVD iso image. For this snapshot review, we used a Live DVD iso image.The Sabayon installer is a feature-rich installer, and will appeal to advanced users, while providing a platform for new users to learn about one of the most important steps in getting a Linux operating system up and running. It supports LVM and RAID, with LVM as the default disk partitioning scheme, and GRUB (Grand Unified Boot Loader) as the only boot loader available.
The installer provides a number of installation options:
- install to a standard desktop PC
- install a system optimized for Ultra Mobile PCs (UMPC) such as the EeePC
- install a gui-less core or server-type system
With a standard PC install, you have a choice of four (4) desktops - KDE (default), Gnome, Xfce, and Fluxbox. If you are new to Linux, and are installing Sabayon for the first time, we recommend that you stick with KDE, the default desktop environment.
Multimedia/Internet: Sabayon Linux ships with a very comprehensive set of software programs. The average desktop user may never have to install another software on a fresh installation of Sabayon. Aside from Knoppix, no other distro ships with a better software selection.
By default, Sabayon installs a wide variety of multimedia and Internet applications. For starters, Elisa Media Center is installed. Real Player 10, K9copy (a video DVD backup program), KMid (MIDI/Karaoke file player) are featured in the menu. Kaffeine and VLC are installed, and will gladly play your commercial (encrypted) DVD videos. For playing audio files or audio CDs, Amarok, the default audio player for the K Desktop Environment, is installed. There are a number of other audio players installed, but Amarok is the most feature-rich.
Your options for browsing the Internet are Konqueror, the default KDE browser, and Firefox 3. Both can only play a subset of multimedia files that are most commonly encountered on the Web. Other Internet applications installed are Google Earth, Ekika Softphone (IP telephony and video conferencing software), NX client, and a choice of chat applications - Skype, Pidgin (formerly known as GAIM), and Kopete. Kopete is a desktop equivalent of Meebo, having support for multiple Internet Messaging (IM) protocols.
Productivity/Utilities: Sabayon ships with OpenOffice.org Suite, a free and open source office application similar to Microsoft Office. Evolution, a Microsoft Outlook equivalent, is also installed. All the desktop utilities that the average user could possibly use are installed by default. Lacie LightScribe Labeler 4L, and LightScribe Simple Labeler are nice additions.
For developers, the open source versions of Qt Assistant and Qt Linguist (for adding translations to Qt application) are installed. Qt is a comprehensive C++ framework for cross-platform application development. Aside from these Qt applications, there are several other development and debugging tools. These tools can be installed on any other distro, but with Sabayon, they are pre-installed.
If you have the hardware for it, you can run other operating systems on Sabayon using VirtualBox, an OS virtualization tool that was acquired by Sun Microsystems. VirtualBox is fast becoming a standard application on Linux distros.
Security: The Linux kernel has a built-in firewall, but not all Linux distros ship with a graphical frontend to configure and manage it. Sabayon ships with KMyFirewall, a fully-featured graphical frontend to Iptables, the Linux firewall. OpenVPN, a graphical VPN manager, and KlamAV - the KDE frontend for ClamAV, are featured in the default installation.
Games/Graphics: Aside from the regular 2D games that are a part of the stock installation of most Linux and BSD desktop distros, Sabayon ships with more advanced 3D games than any other non-game-specific desktop distro. If you have the hardware for 3D gaming, you will enjoy playing with:
- Battle for Wesnoth
- Nexuiz: FPS game based on Dark Places, an advanced Quake 1 engine
- Sauerbraten: Single/multi-player FPS game
- Second Life: 3D MMORPG virtual world
Inkscape, a vector graphics application, Digicam, XSane (graphics scanning tool), and F-spot are just a few of the graphics applications that are featured in a default installation of Sabayon.
Administration: Like all desktop distros, Sabayon has a gui tool for managing applications. Although still a work in pregress, Spritz, the Sabayon graphical package manager, is simple to use. In addition to Spritz, Sabayon also comes pre-installed with Portato, a gui frontend to Portage, the package manager for Sabayon and Gentoo (NOTE: Sabayon is based on Gentoo). Unlike Ubuntu, which uses sudo for access to admin privileges, Sabayon sticks with the traditional root-user account system.
Miscellanea: Sabayon is an example of the way Linux distros used to be, before Ubuntu came along and offered a water-down version of the Linux desktop. Sabayon offers something for all user types: New users will especially love the range of software installed, and expert users will welcome the freedom to configure various aspects of the system during the installation process. This is something that Ubuntu and other distros derived from it have taken away.
As much as we love this distro, there are several area that still needs work:
- The menu is not very well organized. You will frequently encounter double listing of several applications in the menu
- A few items will not launch from the menu
- It does not have it’s own Control Center. We are not talking about the default KDE Control Center, but an administrative hub for the operating system, just as in Mandriva and openSUSE
- Sabayon is a resource hug. To enjoy using Sabayon, you need a very powerful machine. The Live DVD installer, for example, will not run on a Pentium III PC with 512 MB of RAM
All that aside, Sabayon is a highly recommended distro.
Download/Buy: CD and DVD iso images for x86 and 64-bit architectures are available for download
