Sabayon is a Gentoo based Linux distro, created with the philosophy of “out-of-the-box” philosophy and it aims to give users a wide range of applications, ready to use and a self-configured operating system. I reviewed the Sabayon 9 as well and was pretty impressed by it!
I downloaded the Sabayon 10 Gnome, KDE and Mate versions. XFCE is also there but I wanted to try out the Mate version, which is new in Sabayon 10 release. ISO sizes are quite heavy, 1.6 GB for Gnome and 2.1 GB for KDE. Mate is 763 MB and is a stripped down version with very few apps. I downloaded 32-bit versions of all the distros.
I booted all of them in my Asus K54C laptop with 2.2 GHz Intel 2nd Gen Ci3 processor and 2 GB DDR3 RAM. Given limited RAM, I guess, 32-bit ISO won’t be an issue.
First was a live-boot followed by HD installation. Live-boot was graphical and quick without asking any unnecessary Q&A. Installation using the Anaconda installer was really easy and similar for both Gnome and KDE. It asked me questions on language, keyboard, location and HD drive where to install. I set up the user account and passwords for root and user account. And within 5 minutes this is done. Rest of the installation took about 25 minutes and within 30 min. my laptop is ready with Sabayon installation.
The dark blue interface looks really well and of course, you can change the wallpaper to make it look less serious. In KDE, you can install themes and it’ll look brighter as well.
Applications
Both Sabayon KDE and Gnome have a rich ensemble of the latest applications. Linux kernel is the latest 3.5, Gnome 3.4.2 and KDE 4.9. Yup, Sabayon is the first Linux distro to have a KDE 4.9, I guess others will follow the suit soon!
Gnome 3 desktop is very simplistic and resembles a Gnome fallback. From Applications at the left top, you can browse the application list. Main applications are GIMP 2.8 for image editing, Shotwell for image management and uploading to facebook/flickr/twitter, Chromium is the main browser with empathy as chat client, bit-torrent client to download, LibreOffice suite for office work, document viewer to read comics archives and PDF files, Basero, Cheese Webcam booth, Exaile music player, and Gnome media player. Though VLC is not there in the Gnome version, but all Gstreamer and ffmpeg codecs are there and I could play a movie straight away, out-of-the-box!
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| From Sabayon 10 |
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| From Sabayon 10 |
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| From Sabayon 10 |
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| From Sabayon 10 |
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| From Sabayon 10 |
The KDE version has more apps, mostly KDE centric, apart from what are there in the Gnome version. VLC player is a welcome addition in KDE, and I wished it was there in the Gnome version as well. Nothing plays media better than VLC! Also, desktop globe is by default, in KDE. I really like the 3D view and my 2 year old daughter enjoys playing with it! Good app, for sure.
Read Full Review at Source Web Site: mylinuxexplore.blogspot.ca
