So I get Sabayon Linux Mini. For some quite time this distro was “tickling” me. This really wont be an actual “broad” review, but short, an impression to a Slackware user. For those who are not familiar, this distro is based on Gentoo, actually a most heard (and best, so they say, Gentoo based distro). I’ll leave Slackware out of this, so I’ll do comparison with (somewhat) Mandriva 2007.0

First boot, all the things shown above, just seemed … plain weird. The way things are sorted out, is just weird, you would actually need some time to adjust to it. If you had any previous linux experience, you’ll need to spend time configuring KDE so it looks like KDE should look like. This is also (in my opinion) pretty big issue with Mandriva, since it comes with it’s own kicker menu, way it sorts things and etc …

Compared to all the literally Windows Vista look, this menu really ruins it. I really dont see a reason why they havent made it transparent too if they were doing all this fancy transparency with everything.

Want more weird? Trying to send application from Desktop 4 to DesktopX … confused me, where did regular, standard “To Desktop” go? Move to another viewpoint, yea … ok. Also Advanced options are gone from same menu.

Now just out of box things (desktop icons) that come with the distro.

Installer, since I booted of the disk, using it as the live distro, I didnt go beyond this menu, which put it in simple form, really really remains me of RedHat/Fedora installation. Also talking about looking up on other distro, loading kernel just when booting distro, looks just like Suse/OpenSuse.

In Settings, you’ll find “Desktop Acceleration” so since it’s uncommon, I ran it. And this is what you get, 3D desktop, configuring whether you want AIGXL, XGL or no Desktop acceleration.

When I already mentioned 3D, Sabayon comes with Beryl 0.12, btw which is just really fast, even too fast.

GParted can definetely come in handy, except I really didnt hear good things about it …

Get Live Help, brings up IRC, that’s all I have to say about that.

Beryl Settings are just as regular and are normal Beryl Settings. Same goes for Update Installer, dont even see a reason why is there a update installer.

More on looks, since really all about looks. Except that close/minimize/maximize buttons couldnt be more Windows style, toolbar is also trying to be Windows latest, and is just in my opinion plain ugly and weird.

Now on kernel and system itself. SATA, Core duo (Centrino duo) couldnt really be recognized any better.

To make it simple, everything on your system is recognized. And I would really rate it as really good, if it wanst for the next thing …

There is a lot of distros that are trying to “do” the kernel Gentoo style, except Sabayon is actually using actual 2.6.18-gentoo-rc5 kernel … hmmm :)

Ok, my regular how it sees my walkman phone :)

Perfect.

Looking at fstab didnt really explain it, it just made everything even more weird.

Final words. Sabayon is really all about looks, even the good things that come with it get lost in the looks, that are really not good, that really just weird. I really dont know why is it put as 3.2 I would consider it as 0.1/0.2 or something. This distro really doesnt leave any impression, except big one weird.

They tried to make it different, which they did it’s just too weird. Nothing more to say about it, wouldnt recommend it to anyone … What I would also say is that, this distro is really made for those people who want Gentoo, but cant configure it themselves.