Free Penguin guide - Sabayon
Sabayon Wiki
Sabayon is a Gentoo-based Linux distribution created by Fabio Erculiani, and produced in Trentino, Italy. Sabayon Linux uses Gentoo's Portage system for package management, and all updates and base characteristics are in syncrony with Gentoo's portage
tree and other mechanisms.
So, users can follow guides and articles written for Gentoo users.
But "world updates" are discouraged for beginners or those new to Gentoo, as the structure is a little different and requires a slightly
different method of execution.
A guide has been written by a Sabayon Linux developer on how to do global updates and recompilation of all packages. Unlike Gentoo which installs the system from source code, Sabayon makes the initial install using pre-compiled packages which are bundled with the source code. Sabayon supports the x86 platform. An infant project, "Entropy", is to take a different approach
to managing packages.
For example, a binary package installer utility, "binmerge", would eliminate the need to compile applications already compiled for Sabayon's
pool of binary packages.
Binmerge sits atop Portage's native "emerge" utility, and the command "binmerge application-x" instead of "emerge application-x" would fetch that package from Sabayon's repository.
Binmerge appears to leverage several Portage features such as the "BINHOST" feature and a number of emerge options like "--getpkg" and "--usepkgonly".
The major feature is that it will also be aware of dependencies, both direct and indirect, so complete removal of packages will no longer be a
complex process for a Gentoo system.
Binmerge shipped with the 3.3 miniEdition. Sabayon Linux includes many up-to-date features and software.
A feature named "Entropy", exclusive to Sabayon, incorporates the binary package manager into the distribution.
Many binaries have already been made available and the command "equo" for commandline interpretation of Entropy is in its early beta.
Currently AIGLX, XGL, and Compiz are on the installation discs and can be enabled from the Isolinux boot prompt.
Drivers are provided out of the box for most major ATI and NVIDIA video cards, and hardware auto-detection works well for many.
For those wanting a quicker install or a CD instead of a DVD,
there is the miniEdition. Sabayon Linux is available with the KDE and GNOME desktop environments and Fluxbox. The miniEditions are single-CD and LiveCD releases of the distribution (hence being less than 700 MB in compressed size, as opposed to the 2-4 GB DVDs).
A "miniEd" is normally introduced a week or two after a DVD release, although it is not always true for every single version
(they are available for major ones, certainly).
Recently though, the team has announced that testing will be open in the future, so this time frame may differ.
As they are released later than their DVD counterparts, they are likely to include bug fixes and minor improvements. With 3.3(b) some users of this edition have complained that the type of applications included are inferior, and it indeed is closer to a base
installation with very minimal software.
There are others that want just that. These CDs do not come with all the features present in the DVDs either.
They only provide KDE and Fluxbox as X session types.
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