Sabayon

[exploder]

Recently I installed Sabayon Gnome, mainly because so few distros offer Gnome 3.12. There are a few but Sabayon and Arch immediately came to mind. It has been years since I last tried Sabayon but after using it for a few days now I am liking it. I have always liked the idea of a rolling release and Sabayon seems like an easy way to have a current version of Gnome.

Since Sabayon is based on Gentoo it compiles the software right on the computer, applications seem quicker and more responsive because of how things work. Rigo seems to be a darn good software manager, yes software manager because there are no packages! I found there is a learning curve but everything I needed to know was in the wiki. Malspa was kind enough to give me some tips and advice and that really helped me out a lot!

I pasted some of the commands I need to know into a text document because it will take me a while to memorize them. I did have to edit etc/default/grub when I first installed and updated Sabayon, my screen resolution was wrong and the system kept asking for my keymap at startup. Removing two entries fixed everything and the forum member that helped me gave me a command to run so future updates would not mess my resolution up.

All in all everything went pretty well and I did not mind putting in a little work. I learned something fixing the problems that might be useful in trouble shooting later. From everything I have read, updates come once a week and being new to all this that seems just fine to me. When I first updated Sabayon there were 249 updates available! Other than the keymap issue everything worked perfectly and there I was with a shiny new version of Gnome!

All multimedia worked out of the box and there are different sessions available! Just about anything you could want to do with the system is already in place! At first I thought the install was kind of on the heavy side, then I looked at the other sessions available and realized how versatile it was. Sabayon is known for having a very pleasant default look and there were no disappointments there! There was one application for each task and the defaults are very good in my opinion. LibreOffice was not installed by default though, that gave me a good opportunity to try out Rigo and look at all it's features.

Rigo was easy to use and it has a good complete feature set! I have been running Sabayon Gnome for 3 days now and couldn't be happier. Has anyone else here tried Sabayon recently? More important, how long has your Sabayon install been rolling?

[xenopeek]

It's been a while since I gave Sabayon a spin. But I thought that Rigo was a front-end for Entropy, which downloads pre-compiled software from Sabayon's repositories? You'd use Portage for working with sources, like on Gentoo. Best of both worlds approach like Arch Linux; core software you can download pre-compiled and gets upgraded for your easily, additional software you get through a ports system.

Anyway, great that you found a home to run the latest Gnome Shell version--and that you have been sticking with Gnome Shell

[exploder]

It's been a while since I gave Sabayon a spin. But I thought that Rigo was a front-end for Entropy, which downloads pre-compiled software from Sabayon's repositories?

Thanks! Now I get it!

I very much appreciate you reading my thread and taking the time to post. You were absolutely right about 3.12.2 having better features. After using Gnome Shell a couple of weeks or more I have gotten used to the workflow and do not have to think about how to do things anymore. I am hooked on Gnome development!

[colyn]

I've been using the KDE version for about a week now and it is fast becoming my OS of choice..
Updating is a bit slower than Mint but the apps seem to run a bit faster and it seem to be more stable..

[killer de bug]

Sabayon leader has just announced that x86 (32bits) architecture will be discontinued. Starting now and final part is January 2015.

[xenopeek]

Linking to the post for those interested: http://www.sabayon.org/article/importan ... deprecated

It has a helpful list of things you could do when you are stuck with a 32 bit CPU. The "none of the above" option is a bit harsh

Burn your motherboard and CPU by doing insane overclocking and then, when they die, violently hit them with a hammer while screaming “You shall not compute!”.

[Adelante]

Hi, Exploder

I'm still running Ubuntu Gnome 14.04 since punching up to 3.12. It retains a couple of small problems, such as having to reactivate extensions after a restart, but overall going very well and lovely. I've used Sabayon KDE on and off in the past. I liked it a whole lot, so I might follow your lead and try the Sabayon Gnome 14 release. I think you made a good choice, because they take good care with their work.

[killer de bug]

It has a helpful list of things you could do when you are stuck with a 32 bit CPU. The "none of the above" option is a bit harsh

Burn your motherboard and CPU by doing insane overclocking and then, when they die, violently hit them with a hammer while screaming “You shall not compute!”.

This said, I have an x64 processor. But if I want to test a system in VB I need the x86 version...
I will download an iso in the next few weeks to test it before it gets burned

[exploder]

A lot of distros seem to be moving away from 32 bit support. There are specialized distros for older still functional computer though. Also, it saves the developers a lot of work just building for one architecture.

Sabayon Gnome has been running great for me and the computer I am running it on is fairly old. Intel core 2 duo @ 1.8 GHz, 4 GB DDR 2 RAM, Intel on-board graphics, etc. Everything seems quick and responsive and other than the file editing after install it has been problem free. The software manager is a little slower but once I have everything I need I only really use it to update the system so it's not a problem at all for me.

I think some of the post about 32 bit was meant as humor. I get some humorous messages from the terminal from time to time.

[exploder]

Something else came to mind about running Sabayon Gnome today. I have learned to appreciate applications that I normally do not see as defaults in many other distributions. Audatious for example, it came as the default music player. I had not used Audatious before so I never knew how clean and feature rich it was. Chromium is the default browser, I have tried it in the past but never really liked it as well as Firefox.

I decided to try using Chromium for a while even though I did not like the layout as much as I do Firefox's. Well, after a little tinkering around with the bookmarks menu I started getting more comfortable with it. Since Chromium uses pepper flash and html5 I can watch Xfinity Go now, that was a big plus for me! I find myself really liking Chromium now other than having to manually clean up history but that is not a big deal.

Most Gnome based distros use Rhythmbox as the default music player and I never have really liked it very much. The interface seems cluttered and it looks out of date to me. I have always liked Firefox and still do but Sabayon Gnome kind of got me out of my comfort zone so to speak and got me to try something new. Gnome Shell put me out of my comfort zone at first but I have really grown to appreciate it.

I was getting bored with the same old thing as far as desktop environments go. Over the years I have run Fluxbox, Openbox, IceWM, KDE, Gnome 2x, Mate, Cinnamon, Unity, and I bunch of others I am probably forgetting. So far Gnome Shell has been anything but boring!

[nomko]

Sabayon leader has just announced that x86 (32bits) architecture will be discontinued. Starting now and final part is January 2015

It has a helpful list of things you could do when you are stuck with a 32 bit CPU. The "none of the above" option is a bit harsh

It was and coluld be expected that support for 32-bit CPU's will be discontinued at some point. Nowaday's only 64-bit systems ar sold. So no surprise here for me to read this....

[DrHu]

Maybe 64bit tablet computers are coming, but if it isn't a notebook, it is still likely to have the minimum RAM capacity needed
--not unexpected 64bit OS support has been around a long time within Linux OS

• But maybe Sabayon is rushing it a bit
  --by denying their older user base

Although of course every company wants new users, this is how they grow
--and most ignore current users (missed promotions/discounts and so on)

Some other issues may also exist for windows app fans running on Linux
http://wiki.winehq.org/Wine64
http://www.tuxgarage.com/2011/08/playon ... ts-64.html
--ok they seem ready..

[exploder]

Maybe 64bit tablet computers are coming, but if it isn't a notebook, it is still likely to have the minimum RAM capacity needed

You make a good point!

I think that with Sabayon it has to do with the number of developers. I see 32 bit desktops on craigslist for $10.00 - $15.00, not much of a demand for them these days. It's like when systems went from 16 bit to 32 bit, eventually you had to go with 32 bit.

Even lower end 64 bit systems similar to the one I am using are selling for around $50.00, sometimes a bit more but at any rate 64 bit systems are more widely in use now. There are specialized distributions for legacy hardware, they keep these older, perfectly good computers in use. The big problem with 32 bit systems is multimedia playback is poor, they are just under powered for today's software and operating systems.

That's not saying it is impossible to get decent multimedia playback out of an older 32 bit system. I have such a system as a spare machine, it works but it is limited on RAM and is considerably slower even with a light desktop environment.

[killer de bug]

Maybe 64bit tablet computers are coming, but if it isn't a notebook, it is still likely to have the minimum RAM capacity needed

As soon as you have 1Gb of RAM, x64 is the road to follow... It has already been explained a lot of time

[/dev/urandom]

I own - among others - a 32-bit ThinkPad. Well, if the "advanced" Linux section doesn't want me as a user anymore, I have no choice but to stick with OpenBSD on it. Such a pity.

("Pure" Gentoo is not an option for an older desktop machine. I'd have to spend more time compiling than actually using software. Bah.)

This is one of the reasons why I don't like "distributions of distributions" (Sabayon/Gentoo, Mint/Ubuntu, Manjaro/Arch). They usually break stuff.
(OK, Ubuntu is a bad example. Usually stuff is broken upstream there.)

[exploder]

This is one of the reasons why I don't like "distributions of distributions" (Sabayon/Gentoo, Mint/Ubuntu, Manjaro/Arch). They usually break stuff.
(OK, Ubuntu is a bad example. Usually stuff is broken upstream there.)

No real breakage here so far with Sabayon. Also, I read many positive comments about Arch and Arch based distributions but I have not tried it for myself yet.

[colyn]

This is one of the reasons why I don't like "distributions of distributions" (Sabayon/Gentoo, Mint/Ubuntu, Manjaro/Arch). They usually break stuff.
(OK, Ubuntu is a bad example. Usually stuff is broken upstream there.)

Sabayon KDE is working fine for me with no breakage.. If you know what not to do there should not be any problems..

[/dev/urandom]

Breaking x86 compatibility is a major issue IMO.

[xenopeek]

From the announcement:

Our x86_64 images are multilib, which means that you can run 32bit code on them just fine.

[/dev/urandom]

But not with 32-bit CPUs.