Sabayon Linux 4.1 Review

By Jim on May 11th, 2009

Last week we looked at VirtualBSD, this week we’re moving back to Linux and to a more convential kind of distribution. Sabayon Linux is based on Gentoo. Gentoo as you might already know is somewhat famous for being the “roll your own” kind of distribution. It’s an extremely powerful and customizable version of Linux but installing it in the past has sometimes been difficult for some folks. Gentoo has had the reputation of being one of the “geek’s geek” types of Linux distributions.

Sabayon Linux takes away the potential headaches of Gentoo and makes it mostly very easy and simple to get a Gentoo-based distribution up and running on your machine. Note that this review covers the Gnome version, there is also a KDE version available.

New stuff in this release:

* 2.6.29.1 Linux Kernel
* Compiz and Compiz Fusion 0.8.2
* KDE and Gnome Versions
* Defaults To ext4 for New Installs
* New Art Work and Skin
* Improved Boot Speed
* Multimedia Apps
* XBMC Media Center

For more info on changes, see the press release for Sabayon Linux 4.1.

Installation
Sabayon Linux, like most distributions these days, comes in a Live CD format. You can simply insert the CD into your computer and load up the Sabayon Linux desktop. This is a great place to begin and after your Live CD desktop has loaded simply click the “Install On Disk” icon to start the disk install. When you do that you are offered these options:

* Sabayon Gnome Desktop. This allows you to install a default Gnome environment.

* Sabayon Media Center. This lets you install a media center version of Sabayon Linux featuring XBMC.

* Sabayon Linux Fluxbox Empty Desktop. This lets you install the minimalist Fluxbox environment.

* Sabayon Core Environment.

Read the Rest or visit the Desktop Linux Reviews Blog for more Linux Reviews.