Let us make Linux as phenomenal as the game of soccer!

World Cup 2006. Italy. Dessert. Linux

So far Sabayon Linux 3.3 x86_64 is the only 64 bit Linux desktop distro that has imparted a very positive effect on my mind. Perhaps that's why I am reviewing Sabayon Linux 3.3 x86_64. Linux is deeply loved by people from all over the world. It is good to know that Linux has also touched the hearts of the people who come from the country that won the prestigious 2006 World Cup soccer tournament. I love Italian soccer, especially when the great Diego Maradona was at Napoli.

Why was the Italian soccer team on the podium? Most probably it's due to theirpassion for soccer. So, I wouldn't be surprised if Fabio & his team are also verypassionate about what they do, in this case, Sabayon Linux. I only knew aboutthe "Sabayon" dessert from the various reviews on Distrowatch. Prior to this, Ionly knew that Italy has great soccer talents and has also produced many goodscientific and cardiology literatures. Anyway, kudos to Fabio and his teammates!Sabayon Linux is now at number 8 on Distrowatch.

Sabayon Linux images and logo

Every distribution has its own logo but Sabayon Linux's logo is a bit eccentric or humble in my opinion. Hen's foot, phalanx or even phalanges? Well, I would prefer to think of the logo as representing 3 little phalanges that are powered by a human phalanx which comprises of 3 or more passionate Linux developers, enjoying good music on a romantic evening in Milan. It never occured to me that such a fantastic distro, with a computer gaming theme like Sabayon Linux 3.3 x86_64 would emerge from Gentoo. I would go round the globe to employ such a dedicated talent if I was a recruiter for Mandriva or other distros that need an Ipod touch. Sabayon Linux 3.3 was released on 16th of March 2007.

It took me 3 days to get the Sabayon Linux 3.3 x86_64 iso image via the torrents. I found the 32 bit Live CD and Live DVD just too nice to ignore that I ended up downloading all of them. Worth the wait ! These are Gentoo-based Live CD and Live DVD that come with the infamous Anaconda as the installer. It may take a long time to download the images but it would only take about one hour to install to your hard disk, a Gentoo system!

Core ingredients of 64 bit Sabayon Linux 3.3

This live-dvd features Linux Kernel 2.6.20-r3, KDE 3.5.6, Gnome 2.16.2, X.org 7.2 and GCC 4.1.1. Beryl 0.2.0 r2 is also available. The Proprietary Ati-drivers-8.34.8-r90 and Nvidia-drivers-1.0.9755-r10 are also available & these graphic drivers would be automatically activated when an Ati/Nvidia card is detected at boot time. Sabayon Linux 3.3 also has enhanced support for MacIntel. Unluckily, I only have a Powerpc Mac mini that belongs to my daughter. So no chance to test the MacIntel support.

Details of my Turion 64x2 test machine

Compaq Presario V3222AU (Turion 64x2 processor 1.6Ghz), 1GB DDR2 SDRAM.The graphic card was Nvidia Geforce Go 6150. Wifi-wise, it also come with the Broadcom 4311 chipset, which is the more troublesome model of Broadcom. The sound card on the other hand comes with the Conexant chipset while the ethernet port is using the NFORCE MCP51 chipset. For your information, the developers have suggested that this distro would run reasonably well on a PC with an i686 processor with 512Mb of RAM, if you need a 3D desktop. Of course, you also need an OpenGL-capable 3D graphic card too. Installation-wise, you would need at least 8GB of hard disk space.

Multiple boot options on loading the live-dvd

Sabayon Linux 3.3 x86_64 live-dvd comes with new boot options :-

Start Sabayon Linux 3.3

(I chose this option but Sabayon Linux failed to detect my sound card with Nvidia

chipset. However no problem my other pcs' with AC97' based audio chipset)

Start without music (Choose this and you'll miss a great musical experience

from Jamendo.org. "Fabio truly has good taste in music")

Anonymous internet browsing
(Remain anonymous on the internet via the tor program)

Start graphical installation

(Loaded into the Fluxbox window manager. The installer crashed)

Start text installation

(I didn't try this option as I have lots of ram)

Play with Sauerbraten

(Took as much time as the first option to get to the Fluxbox window manager. I would

proceed automatically to load the game. Nice game! No lagging!)

Play with ColdWar(demo)

(Also took about 4 minutes to get to Fluxbox and then the game. Also another nice

shooting game)

Start in safe mode
(I didn't try this as I had no problem with the Nvidia 1.0-9755 driver)

Acceleration Manager

Whichever options you choose, you'll have to bear with the long boot time. It took me 4 minutes and 10 seconds to reach the Acceleration Manager or Monitor from the boot screen. Meaning that, you would meet the sexy black themed Acceleration Manager first, before the Login Manager appears.

My Nvidia Geforce 6150 go graphic card was detected by the Acceleration Manager as being OpenGL capable. After that, I had to choose whether I need a 3D desktop or not. If I wanted a 3D desktop, the Acceleration Manager has 2 options for me:- AIGLX Desktop Acceleration or XGL Desktop Acceleration. I proceeded with AIGLX as it was more compatible with Nvidia card. Unfortunately there wasn't any music to accompany the long & boring booting up of Sabayon Linux live-dvd. The music from Jamendo.org should be there to psyche you up. This was due to the fact that the Nvidia sound card on my Compaq Presario 3222AU wasn't recognized by the kernel from the start. I realized about that when I could hear the lively music, while I was concurrently booting up the 32 bit version of Sabayon Linux L3.3 x86_64 on my Dell Inspiron 600m notebook with AC97' sound card. Believe it or not, Sabayon Linux live-dvd would make a good company to anyone who needs a live-dvd computing at a discotheque or it may even liven up a Linux user group meeting.

Login Manager appeared after the Acceleration Monitor

25 seconds after I configured the 3D acceleration , the obsidian black Login Manager appeared. The Nvidia logo splashed across the screen seconds before the appearance of the Login Manager. The default user is sabayonuser and the password is blank or sabayonuser. However, I was not allowed to login as root user.

More about the Login Manager. The Login Manager was aesthetically pleasing. However the section where you need to enter the username and password spoilt its beauty. The developers could learn a bit from, other more pleasing looking Login Manager. Perhaps, the plethora of choices of desktops and the unique sessions offered on the Login Manager saved the day! The Desktop and the unique sessions available from the login manager are Gnome 2.16, E16, Fluxbox, KDE 3.5.6, Metisse on Gnome, Metisse on KDE, Failsafe and also the Acceleration Manager. If you need to use the Acceleration Manager again, you can choose the Acceleration Manager option. But you would be prompted for the root password. The password is also root.

I chose default KDE session

It took me 1 minute and 15 seconds to fully load up the KDE environment. The start up splash of KDE was very impressive. Maybe even better than the one in PCLOS 2007 test 4.

KDE greeted me with a very nice 'techno-documentary' theme sound, which was definitely better & livelier than the vanilla KDE greetings. Well, I did not hear this sound from this test machine. Actually I heard this theme sound from my Dell 600m notebook too, running SL3.3 x86.

The LCD's resolution was correctly detected and configured for my Compaq Presario. As a matter of fact Sabayon Linux 3.3 hasn't failed to correctly detect any of my monitors. Just in case it detected the wrong resolution for your monitor, the Screen Resolution Preference tool dialog would let you choose the correct one or something close to that. My touchpad was also well configured.

On the desktop, there were many icons. The theme of obsidian black blended well with the Sabayon Linux logos & icons. I could immediately test Beryl. The windows wobbled & the workspaces on the cube were slick. I had a few crashes while 3D desktop was enabled. There was another 3D effect that impressed me. By making a sweeping mouse movement towards the right upper corner of the desktop, all desktop windows would be rendered to fit nicely on the screen. Please be informed that I had no system crash or freeze when the 3D desktop was disabled. No wonder Ubuntu developers were worried about 'it'.

Besides the icons for games, the icon that attracted me most was the Virtualization Manager icon. Thanks to Redhat. It worked for other distros but buggy for Sabayon Linux. Strange. You can use either Qemu or Xen. So, has everyone endorsed the importance of virtualization? I hope that other virtualization softwares (emulator/virtualizer) would also be included in the Sabayon Linux 3.4.

Hmmm, Kickoff Start Menu again. Initially, I disliked this start menu when it appeared in OpenSuse/SLED. The more I fiddled with this menu on Pardus and OpenSuse10.2, the more I liked it. Btw, the KDE of the mini-edition of SL3.3 x86_64 uses the Classic Main Menu instead of the Kickstart Menu.

There were 3 workspaces available as shown by the desktop page located at the top panel. One neat desktop panel feature that I want to mention here is on how it handled my usbkey or pendrive. Upon plugging in the pendrive, the applets/icons representing the partitions on my thumb drive was displayed on the right corner of the bottom panel. I could easily mount and then access the thumb drive.

As the network card was auto-configured to work by default, I could immediately enjoy Flash while surfing the Internet using either the Konqueror, Opera or Firefox that are bundled with the Live DVD. I am very happy that
I don't have to use the Nspluginwrapper. Besides that , I could also enjoy the Internet radio from live365.com. Thanks to Kmplayer. The Altec Lansing speaker on my Compaq notebook added the extra kicks. Actually, I could listen to the music after I configured Alsamixer.

I also double-clicked the other icons available on the desktop. The Google Earth worked flawlessly and gracefully. I could even see the roof of my house. The partition editor (Gparted) also worked wonderfully. As Gparted was very stable & effective, I even ran it on my other computers that were re-partitioned. There were 3 games represented as icons on the desktop. Battle For Wesnoth, the Sauerbraten, and the Cold War games. The games loaded very fast. There was no lagging too. Another usefulness of Sabayon Linux 3.3 x86_64 is that, it allows out-of-the-box write access to Ntfs partition. The automounted Ntfs partition can be found at the Computer tab of the Kickstart Menu. These auto-mounted Ntfs or Fat32 or Fat32 partition can also be accessed from the storage media of the System Menu Applet. The Ntfs-3g tool worked flawlessly.

Also Tried Live Gnome Desktop

There were even more icons on the Gnome desktop (live session). Altogether there were 13 icons. More desktop icons than the KDE desktop. I thought the Gnome desktop should traditionally be the neater one. The thing that managed to impress me was the Disk Mounter Applet located at the right side of the Desktop Panel. All my local disks devices like the dvd-rom, Ntfs partition, Fat32 partition & the ext3 partitions were ready for me to mount it. Left-clicking the mouse or touchpad gave me a choice to mount the disks or devices.

Gnome desktop was using a Slab-based menu, like the one used in openSUSE 10.2 or the SLED 10. I discovered a problem with the Slab menu. The Slab menu failed to display the Recently Used Applications, Favourite Applications, & Recent Documents. Wait! Wait a minute! After fiddling with it for a while, the Recently Used Apps, Fav Apps, and the Recent Docs began to appear as it should be.

I think the Slab menu would serve better if the 'More Applications' browser menu is merged with 'Control Center' menu. Then the Gnome desktop of Sabayon Linux would be much cleaner and neater. The developer of slab menu, or the Sabayon developer for that matter, may want to create a sliding menu for the merged 'More Application' browser and 'Control Center' menu. Instead of a horizontal sliding one seen in the Kickoff start Menu, they may want to make the merged menu slide vertically like a Nokia handphone. That would make it more user-friendly. Of course, Gnome would look very much neater.

Below, you can see the 'More Applications' browser menu and the Control Center.

Also Tried Metisse

Unique KDE and Gnome session with Metisse wouldn't load up fully, but it was functional. I had to press the ctrl-alt-backspace keys to restart the X-Server when it happened. When the Gnome/KDE desktop loaded up fully, I had the opportunity to play with the Metisse technology which had been appearing very regularly on Mandriva products. Quite frequently, error messages would pop up, informing me that the X-Server doesn't support XRandR extension. An update of the SL 3.3 x86_64 got rid of the errors. I am very positive that Metisse would be able to enhance your desktop productivity. A very good article on how to take advantage of Metisse can be found here. Too bad, I failed to get screenshots of the Metisse effects. The Gimp Gui was being flipped to the right as I scrolled down the Firefox page, so that you can see the content behind the Gimp Gui.

Below is the screenshot of Fluxbox window manager for low in resources pc. Unlike E16, there is no menu for KDE or Gnome applications. Below is Enlightenment16 for low-in-resources computer. One of the things that I truly like about Sabayon Linux 3.3 x86_64 is that you can access the programs or tools that belong to other desktop environments while you are in another environment. For example, while I was in E16, I could access Gnome or KDE applications. If you were in KDE session, you could access Gnome application from the Kickstart menu.

Installed Onto My Presario's Hard Disk

The Anaconda installer of the live-dvd would install everything. No package selection process allowed for you. I hope the Sabayon team would allow us to determine what packages go into the installation in the next version of Sabayon Linux. Of course, I can also use the mini-edition Sabayon Linux if I feel that the live-dvd installs too many packages into my hard disk. In order to install, I clicked on the UPDATE INSTALLER icon first. After updating the installer, I clicked on the INSTALL ON DISK icon to start the installation process.

The screens that were displayed by Anaconda were similar to that of Fedora Core. One thing that was very un-intuitive was the screen that needed you to enter the root password & create a normal user account. In Fedora Core, this user account creation was less confusing although an extra step was required. It took me about 52 minutes to install the DVD version of Sabayon Linux 3.3 64 Bit on this Compaq Presario v3000 series (whereas it took only 12 minutes to install the mini-edition). After 52 minutes, you have a famous a do-it-yourself Gentoo system. There were so many applications that I really didn't know what else to emerge. Interestingly, it only took 39 minutes to install Sabayon Linux 3.3 64 Bit to my hard disk when I set the CPU Frequency Policy of the KPowersave to 'Performance' level. The default was 'Dynamic'.

First Boot (post-installation)

My Vista Business was included in the Grub Menu. After selecting to boot SL3.3 x86_64, it took about 55 seconds to make a first boot. The number of icons on the KDE desktop had been reduced dramatically on the freshly installed Sabayon Linux as compared to the live-dvd. Btw, I rarely use my Vista because I feel very insecure when using it.

Post-install, the icons on the KDE desktop had been reduced to only Battle For Wesnoth, Kuroo, Get Live Help, Virtual machine manager, Sauerbraten and the Google Earth. The desktop looked so much neater. For your information, there were 10 desktop icons, when you run SL 3.3 in live session from the dvd. The 10 icons were Battles for Wesnoth, Cold War Demo, Get Live Help, Google Earth, Install on Disk, NX client, Partition Editor, Sauerbraten, Gparted partition editor, & the Update Installer icons.

The Freshly Installed Sabayon Linux 3.3

On the upper panel, you would notice that you have 4 workspaces by default. Beryl worked well but at time freezed. Occasionally, I couldn't maximize or minimize a window. When I inserted my Gangs of New York original DVD into the dvd-rom, I was given a choice between Kaffeine and Codeine to play the DVD. Thank you Sabayon Linux. The movie that I thought I had finished half way because I had I had lost the second dvd was actually due to my ignorance. The dvd player hinted to me 6 months ago that I needed a second dvd to continue with the Gangs of New York movie, when actually, one dvd media was enough. I trusted my DVD player & I searched high and low for the 2nd dvd media but I couldn't find it.

So, in Sabayon 3.3, I found out about the truth. I realized about my ignorance, and that I shouldn't have trusted my dvd player so much. So, Kaffeine played the whole movie from that 1 dvd or 'disc 1' only. What a nice movie featuring Leonardo Dicaprio and Cameron Diaz. I suppose this is what happens when you patronize the cinema more than your own home theatre system. Below are the video and sound applications offered on this live-dvd. Sabayon Linux 3.3 was also capable of playing Google videos, Avi video, Wmw video, Quicktime video, Mp3 songs and Mpeg video out-of-the-box. There are many players e.g. Vlc, Mplayer, Real Player, etc. I wish that 64 bit Linux computing on other Linux distros would be as easy as Sabayon Linux 3.3 x86_64 or SimplyMEPIS 6.5.

Printer And Camera.

Sabayon Linux 3.3 x86_64 had no problem with my HP Officejet 4355 all-in-one printer. The best thing was that I could choose an easier tool to set up my HP printer. Instead of using the 'Add Printer Wizard' from the Kickstart Menu->Application Tab->Setting->KDE Control Module, I chose a Gnome application instead. The 'Gnome-Cups-Add' application was also located at the Kickstart Menu->Application Tab->Setting. This Gnome printer setup tool was so much easier to use as compared to the its KDE counterpart.

Wired And Wireless Networking

While I was in the live session of SL3.3 x86_64 live-dvd, I had a chance to test its Smb networking. I had to help my clerk at the office to retrieve her Excel document stuck in a problematic Win Xp pc. I was testing SL at that time in my office. Sabayon Linux managed to impress her. Why? Because, the other local windows pc couldn't retrieve it! I couldn't get the Dell1390 wlan adapter (with Broadcom's bcm4311 chipset) in my Compaq Presario V3222AU to work despite using Ndiswrapper 1.37, with the downloaded Vista driver from Hp's website. It uses the newer Bcmwl6.inf instead of Bcmwl5. Luckily, the open source Bcm43xx driver and the firmwares that came along with Sabayon Linux 3.3 x86_64 by default managed to connect my Dell1390 wlan adapter (with Broadcom's bcm4311 chipset) to my US ROBOTICS wifi router with WEP enabled but not with WPA-PSK. The connection was good and reliable!

Even the XP driver from the Dell's website, featuring Bcmwl5.inf, site didn't work. Sabayon Linux 3.3 (32 bit version) x86 prevailed on my Dell Inspiron 600m notebook's Ipw2100 wlan adapter. No problem with WPA-PSK. Sabayon Linux 3.3 x86_64 also handled the Ipw3945 wlan adapter on my Dell Inspiron 640m out-of-the-box. No problem with WPA-PSK. I truly hope that the updated version of Device-Scape wifi stack will solve my bcm43xx problem. The bcm43xx_mac802river which will be shipped with the preview of Sabayon Linux 3.4, IMHO, will most likely be better than the existing bcm43xx module.

Can Your CPU Compile Fast Enough?

One thing I truly dislike about Gentoo is the compilation ordeal. Can my CPU compile fast enough? Please bear with Kuroo/Portage. Installation of a package from the source can be very time consuming. I do hope that Sabayon Linux developers would give us a choice of installing binary packages in the future. This is especially important, as certain popular, big ones, would take a long time to compile. By the way, it took me 3 hours to sync SL3.3.

Below is the Qt-based Kuroo interface for Portage. Syncing in Kuroo seemed to last forever. In the end, I opted for the command line interface to do the syncing.

There are just too many applications offered by the dvd. I couldn't think of any extra applications that I need to emerge. By the way, here is the list of packages that would be installed onto the 64 bit system by default. While this is the list for the 32 bit counterpart.

Entertaining Linux Distro

Despite the infrequent issues with the compositing window manager instability, the Broadcom wifi driver problem, the unavailability of sound out-of-the-box, the slow boot issues, the abundance of bleeding edge applications & the cool theme managed to offset any tinge of frustrations in me.

Long boot time in Linux has always been a Linux users' aversion. In this review, I found out that the SL3.3 x86_64 postinstallation first boot was 55 seconds. The following boots were even longer, 64secs. I hope the developers would bring it down to 35-45 seconds. Maybe Einit would be able to solve this booting issue.

Another factor which I think will give SL the further ascent on the Distrowatch.com ranking would be the Entropy Project. I really feel that Sabayon Linux 3.3 64 bit is a solid 64 bit desktop distro. Let's hope that the maker of Playstation 3 will preload Sabayon Linux on its gaming machine one day. This would definitely increase the chance of higher awareness or uptake of Linux. Me, I would buy a Dell gaming range of pc or PS3 preloaded with a more polished SL. Worry ? Worry not! Bleeding edges in Sabayon Linux are caused by clean surgical cuts and not by divc !

Recommendations:-

-Contact Sony for sponsorship. This would definitely speed up whatever project that Fabio and his team are dreaming of.

-Offer to become the Linux vendor for Sony Playstation division.

-Contact Dell if they are interested in preloading SL in their gamingrange of computers. I am positive that with the inclusion of Ubuntu and Sabayon Linux, its sales of pcs would be much better.

-Help Kuroo creator to make the interface much more newbie friendly.

Thank you for reading this review.

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