I first tried Sabayon Linux in the 3.2 edition and I was plesantly surprised. It found my wireless card, worked well with everything on my box, but it had a few kinks and oddities that they seem to have worked out. Needless to say, despite my dependency on Windows at work, I still like to have the ability to boot in to linux when I can, so I decided to give Sabayon 3.4 a try.

I was pleasantly surprised once again. I downloaded the Sabayon 3.4 Dvd, burned it and fired it up. The first time through I went through a normal boot, and once I was in to Sabayon (it took a minute or two as it worked out what it needed to configure), I was in a stock Sabayon install with out compiz fusion. I attempted to install from the live cd and I had no keyboard. Determined not to let that ruin my day, I rebooted the system (power button) and booted in to the Graphical Installer (you can see screenshots HERE).

The GI is headed by fluxbox, which for what it needs to do is good, it configures your internet access so you can browse the web while you install and it took maybe an hour to get every thing (including the kitchen sink) installed and configured. Upon first boot, it took a bit of time to configure everything as well, however if you’ve ever installed Vista, then this time is normal . The system worked out of the box. Sound, wireless, network, dvds, everything was working except Compiz Fusion. This is a must for me these days as I like eye candy and linux is actually ahead of Vista in this area.

It was a simple matter of enabling acceleration for my card and rebooting (I could have restarted X, but I feel a good reboot is better) and I was off and running with compiz. I have to say, they’ve done a nice job with the look and feel of sabayon. The kde menus are nice and they way they operate flawless. The selection of programs provided is abundant and they supply everything you could need on a linux box, including a plethora of games (most of which I have never heard of!). The system works. After a week of using Sabayon, I haven’t found very many things I dislike about it and I’m glad to say that I think I’m going to be using it a little more often.

I’d love to hear what you think about sabayon if you’ve tried it, please remember I am not tech support for the distro, if you have a specific question, I’ll try, but you should really check out their forums.