Sabayon 15.11 KDE: hot, hotter and burnt

Sabayon is a distribution not famous among the majority of Linux fans, although it still has a decent army of followers. It is in the Top 30 of distributions, according to Distrowatch.

I have reviewed Sabayon several times some time ago. It was back in 2012 when I looked at version Sabayon 8.0. Since then, Sabayon changed the way they number their versions and started to produce new releases every single month. Version 15.11 was released at the end of October 2015.

You can get ISO images of Sabayon either though one of their mirrors, or by torrent. I downloaded Sabayon 15.11 KDE 64-bit that is about 1.9 GB in size. Along with KDE, you can get Xfce, MATE, GNOME and some more flavours, including your own "SpinBase", if you wish.

I used the Ubuntu's built-in tool to "burn" the ISO image of Sabaon 15.11 KDE onto my USB stick. It worked for me.

Reboot. Choose to boot from USB. Let's go!

Experiences of a software consultant with various Linux distributions

I like reading comments under the posts of my Linux blog.

Some of these comments are short. Some of them are extended to several paragraphs. And some of them deserve a separate post. That's why I decided to re-publish a comment by Balaji Neelakantan to the post "What would be my own ideal Linux distribution?" as a separate story. 

I hope you will enjoy. Fasten your seatbelts! Let's go!

Sabayon 8.0: slightly burnt dessert

February 2012 brought us some fresh releases of Linux-based operating systems. These systems are not as big and famous as Ubuntu, Fedora or OpenSuSE, but still have a considerable army of fans.

I have already written about the PCLinuxOS 2012.02 release.

Today I will tell you about another, Sabayon 8.0.

It is not my first, or even my second trip to the Sabayon camp. The first time I tried Sabayon 5.5 XFCE. The second trip was to Sabayon 6.0 KDE. The results of these trips were different. Version 5.5 XFCE was very disappointing, mostly because it was still in the experimental stage. Sabayon 6.0 KDE was very exciting. I felt it was a very polished distribution.

How times have changed. As you can see, I skipped my review of Sabayon 7, being busy with other system reviews. The 7th version of Sabayon was released in October 2011. This meant that the developers released a new version of their Linux distribution every three months! Quite timely, I would say! Let’s see how Sabayon 8.0 measures up.

The ISO size of Sabayon 8.0 KDE distribution is about 2.2 Gb in size. It is about 10% larger than version 7 (2 Gb), and 70% larger than version 6 (1.3 Gb)! Wow! That’s an amazing increase in size!

You can download the ISO from a torrent or mirror which are located in different parts of the world, from Japan to Argentina.

Once the ISO file was downloaded, I used Unetbootin to “burn” the image of Sabayon 8.0 to my 8 Gb USB stick.

So, preparations are over. USB stick is in the port of my Fujitsu-Siemens Amilo Pi 1505 laptop. Reboot. Choose to boot from USB. Let’s go!

Bravo, Sabayon!

or Where Everything "Just Works"

Do you know what all my reviews have in common so far?
Argh, yes, you're right. All of them are about Operating systems. Mostly Linux, but also few about BSD-based.
Anything else?
Guess!
Ok, let me tell you. I have tried many distributions so far, and have found none which works ideally for me from the very start to the very end.
Is there any ideal solution for me then? Sure, it should be! Linux world is so vast, and it is growing. It has to have a place which ideally suits me.
Today I will tell you about a system which worked for me almost ideally. There were no issues, apart from few very minor.
What is the name? You have probably read the title of this post already. This is Sabayon 6.0. It has several different versions, and my choice this time was for KDE.
I have written about previous version of Sabayon very recently, and you might notice that I was not very happy that time. Because that was a review of Sabayon 5.5 XFCE. This is experimental release, full of issues which were found by myself in big quantities, and even more are to be listed.
Opposite to XFCE, Sabayon KDE and GNOME versions are recognised as stable and reliable. I like KDE, that's why I chose KDE version for this review.
Image size for Sabayon 6.0 KDE is about 1.3 Gb. It means I cannot "burn" it to CD-RW or 1 Gb USB stick. My choice this time was for DVD-RW.
My usual guinea pig for writing reviews is Compaq C300 laptop. Occasionally I use Toshiba L500-19X. Which of those I tried today? Neither. Today's guinea pig is HP Compaq 6710b, which I have never used for Linux reviews before. This is Intel Centrino Duo 2 GHz laptop with 2 Gb RAM.
DVD disk is in the drive. Reboot. Choose to boot from DVD. Let's go!

Sabayon XFCE: the story continues

My previous post was about Sabayon XFCE.

For those who did not read it and does not know what Sabayon is, I tell that Sabayon is Linux distribution based on Gentoo.
I got multiple comments for that post, and some of them looked very helpful. I could not help but to give Sabayon XFCE another go.
USB stick is in the port. Reboot. Choose to boot from USB. Let's go!

How to do simple things the Sabayon way

Gentoo penguin

Do you think there is only one penguin Tux? You are wrong. There is whole family of them. They are all brothers, because they have same father: Linux kernel code by Linus Torvalds. But they are not identical. They have their own names: Debian, RedHat, Slackware, Arch. Each brother has his own family: Linux distros based on certain base code. I have written about members of many families already. Except for one which is yet to be named.
This Tux received his name from fastest underwater swimming penguin: Gentoo. Today I will take sample from this family, and this sample is named Sabayon.
Official download page provides links to different versions of Sabayon. Latest release with name 5.5 is available with KDE, GNOME, E17, LXDE and XFCE desktop environments, as well as in ServerBase and SpinBase variants. Unfortunately KDE and GNOME versions both weight too much for CD or 1Gb USB stick which I have. That's why my choice was made for Sabayon XFCE version.
Sabayon is officially supported by Unetbootin utility. I successfully "burned" ISO image to USB stick. I also tried dd command option later, but it did not work with Sabayon 5.5.
USB stick is ready and plugged into USB port. Reboot. Choose to boot from USB. Let's go!