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Sabayon Linux 4.2 KDE Review

August 15th, 2009 • Category: reviews,sabayon •

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Sabayon is a Gentoo Linux-based, multi-purpose distribution. Previous releases of Sabayon came in one huge DVD iso image with the option to install your favorite desktop. However, the latest release is available in iso images distinguished by desktop environments. For example, we have Sabayon 4.x KDE, Sabayon 4.x Gnome, etc. This review is based on Sabayon 4.2 KDE. A future review will focus on Sabayon 4.2 Gnome.

Now, come with me, let’s see what Sabayon 4.2 KDE has to offer.

Installation: Sabayon features a beautiful graphical installer that offers more install options than is available on any other distro. You could choose to install any number of systems – desktop, core (server), and even to a UMPC (netbooks, etc). In terms of the install options, no other distro makes it this easy. If you are a power user and are more comfortable performing a text-based installation, there is an option for you, too.

Sabayon install options

The installer has support for LVM, RAID, and disk encryption. LVM is the default disk partitioning scheme, and, aside from the logical volume for swap, the installer only creates one other logical volume. If you opt to create additional logical volumes beyond what Sabayon creates, there is a tutorial here to help you along. Ext4 is the default filesystem, with GRUB as the boot loader.

Desktop: Sabayon desktop features a very beautiful desktop background. This is the quality of desktop background PCLinuxOS should aim for. The menu, using the kick-off style, is very well organized. You will find the applications you need where you expect them to be. Everything written about the menu on Pardus 2009 (also a KDE-based distro) applies here.

Sabayon’s Desktop

Default Installed Applications:

• OpenOffice.org 3.1.0
• Mozilla Firefox 3.5.1
• Dragon Player
• VLC media player
• XBMC media center
• Qt Linguist
• Qt Assistant
• Qt Designer
• Konqueror (of course)
• Kdenlive
• Amarok
• Kopete, the multi-protocol IM client
• Sweeper, a system cleaner
• KTorrent, a BitTorrent client

In terms of applications installed by default, no other distro reviewed and listed on this site matches Sabayon in the range and quality of applications installed. There is something for all user levels – noob- to guru-level. That said, some very useful application installed by default on previous versions are missing in this release. For example, VirtualBox, the virtualization software, installed by default in previous versions, is nowhere to be found. It is available in the repo, but what is the point of removing it from this release. Also removed from the default installation are Lacie LightScribe Labeler 4L, and LightScribe Simple Labeler. These are very useful tools that should never have been removed.

This is a KDE version, but where is K3b or any other CD/DVD burner? It (K3b) is in the repo, but why was it not installed? Even after installing it, using Sulfur, there was no entry for it in the menu, and I could not find it in my path.

Unlike Pardus and Mint, Sabayon comes loaded with games – all kinds of games. If you love playing desktop games, and have time to kill, Sabayon will feed your addiction.

Software Management: Sulfur is the new name of Sabayon’s package manager’s graphical frontend. It was formerly known as Spritz. I find it not as intuitive to use as other graphical package managers. Synaptic, the graphical package manager used on apt-based (that is Debian based) or apt-ified distros is better. Even the graphical frontend to Pisi, the package manager used on Pardus, is more intuitive to use. Sulfur is definitely still a work in progress.

Sulfur

Administration: Sabayon uses the traditional UNIX root account for access to performing system-wide admin tasks. There are graphical tools for performing many of these tasks, but for some, you will need to use a shell terminal. This is an area where Sabayon trails Mandriva, which has just about some of the best graphical management tools available on any desktop distro.

Almost all of the graphical management tools on Sabayon 4.2 KDE are actually KDE-specific tools. You will find these tools in the system Control Center.

Control Center

Kuser, user management utility

Service Manager

Browsers and Browser plugins for Web browsing, Sabayon comes pre-installed with Firefox 3.0.1 and Konqueror, the native file manager and Web browser for the K Desktop Environment. Using Firefox, you won’t have any problems viewing your favorite flash videos on YouTube, loading a Java applet, or viewing any number of other multimedia content you will encounter on the Web. Konqueror will handle flash alright, but requires some tweaking to load Java applets.

Security tools and Network Manager: A firewall application is not a magic bullet that will solve all security issues on a networked pc, but it plays a very important role. The Linux kernel has an enterprise-class firewall application built-in. That application, IPTables, is not the easiest to configure, but there are several graphical clients that makes working with IPTables less of a hassle for all user grades. Pardus, Fedora, and Mandriva, all have a graphical firewall client pre-installed. The last Sabayon version I reviewed prior to this release came with KMyfirewall pre-installed. Not so with Sabayon 4.2 KDE.

Not only is there no graphical firewall client, but the IPTables script is not even running, and you wont find any graphical firewall clients in the default repo.

OpenVPN and VPNC, the free client for Cisco’s VPN routing software, are installed. The Network Manager plugins for both applications are also installed. In essence, you could configure VPN connections from the Network Manager’s interface. Talking about Network Manager, Sabayon’s Network Manager applet appears to be custom designed. It the only Network Manager applet that gives you the option to set how many wireless networks to display. However, no matter how many I set it to, it only manages to display just two.

Network Manager Settings

Media and Hardware Detection: Except for the detection of some of my personal audio CDs, everything I wrote about media detection on Pardus 2009 applies here. You will be able to play encrypted DVD videos on Sabayon with either Dragon Player or VLC media player.

Hardware detection is where Sabayon falls short, at least when it came to detecting and auto-configuring my HP Deskjet F4280 printer, the same printer used to test printer configuration on all distros. Whereas Pardus had no problem detecting and auto-configuring, Sabayon could not. Even when I tried to manually set it up, that printer was not available in the list of HP printers in the printer database.

What’s special about Sabayon 4.2 KDE? One area where Sabayon outlines nearly every other distro is in range and quality of applications installed by default. Knoppix gives your nearly everything under the Sun, but Sabayon offers a reasonable set of applications without cluttering the menu with applications you will never use.

The installer is one of the best. If you choose to use Sabayon in Live CD/DVD mode, and then opt to install it on your PC’s hard drive, you still get the same full-featured installer.

What needs to improve? Plenty, and they are all centered around graphical management tools. Here’s a short list:

• Sabayon needs more custom, graphical admin tools. Currently, many of the system-wide tasks can only be done from a shell terminal
• IPTables should be started out of the box. There’s no good reason why it should not. In addition, there should be a graphical firewall client pre-installed.
• LVM is the default disk partitioning scheme. That’s a good thing (I am a fan of LVM, can’t live without it.) Maintaining LVM from the command line is not that difficult, but a gui tool makes that task a whole lot easier. Mandriva, Fedora, and Debian all have a gui tool for LVM, and I see no reason why Sabayon should not have one. Perhaps there is one, but it is installed, and it is not in the default repo.
• I’ll like to be able to set the system clock to sync to an NTP server without dropping to the command line. Even when I ran /etc/init.d/ntp-client from the command line, it failed to start. What gives?
• Sabayon needs an application like Pardus’s Kaptan. An application designed to run on first boot to help users customize a freshly installed system.
• This has been mentioned earlier in this review, but it is worth repeating here:
  This is a KDE version, but where is K3b or any other CD/DVD burner? It (K3b) is in the repo, but why was it not installed? Even after installing it, using Sulfur, there was no entry for it in the menu, and I could not find it in my path.

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