When I first knew of Sabayon Linux (a little bit after their rename, they were called RR64 or something) I became very interested, what with it being a Gentoo based distro and all. At first I was also a little bit sceptic because they were based on Gentoo and at the same time trying to provide binary packages. Then, the artwork wasn't really my taste (yes, I like artwork, I totally go for it.) So, despite it being interesting and all, I didn't venture myself into actually installing it as my default desktop.

A few months ago they came up with Sabayon 3.5 Loop 1 and a renewed look. Let's face it, I was mainly attracted by the new looks. So I went to their site and downloaded the x86 dvd. After testing it a little on my notebook (and being positively surprised by the option "anonymous internet browsing") I decided it was not the time to install it. That and the fact that it didn't run on my other laptop (missing kernel feature) so I let it go once more...

Finally, it came the time. I installed Sabayon 3.5 Loop 3 and was happy with it. The installation went a little slow and I had to install it 4 times before actually understanding that it was normal for the update applet (etp) to hang a little while while updating sources and the available packages. Also I learned that it is not a good idea to interrupt that process --the applet seemed dead, but it wasn't. Anyway, once I got the hang of it (one word: patience), I started exprimenting a little and couldn't help going back to my old gentoo days. So I ran "emerge sync" and then "emerge -up world" just to find that it didn't work! I guess it's because the packages installed by Entropy (the Sabayon binary package manager) didn't appear on "world".... 

Then I recalled seeing in Spritz (the graphical fronted to Entropy) something about "remember to run revdep-rebuild after this installation" or something like that. So i ran revdep-rebuild and turns out that I needed to recompile 4 packages. Then I ran it again, and again, and again, and it always complained about having to install gcc once more. This got a little bit on my nerves (especially when the update applet told me that all the packages that I recompiled with revdep-rebuild were going to be downgraded).

 So I thought ok, maybe that's going to be gone once I install Sabayon 3.5. So I did, I waited until the final version came out, downloaded it and installed it. This time I knew better, so I was patient at the first boot, I let etp upgrade my system and I didn't run revdep-rebuild. There are some things that keep bugging me though. I can't compile acpi4asus (don't know why), and my gnome-desktop (just after logging in, before running any extra program) uses more than 40% of my Memory (WHY? Fedora uses barely 30% or less maybe). And then, what is tracker? I've never seen tracker before, and why oh why do I have beagle preinstalled?

Now, don't get me wrong. I really like this distro, I just don't know why does it use so many resources. That's not very Gentoo. The package manager is very cool indeed, but then, it isn't really that fast. I mean, yum is like twice as fast, or apt-get (in debian), not to speak about pacman. On the other hand I think this distro is what Gentoo really needs right now, and I really feel this urge to help and perhaps compiling some packages myself and making them available as a community repository. That's a very cool part of Sabayon (which I already found on Arch Linux, for example, and Vector Linux is also beginning to implement), the possibility of using community packages broadens the package selection and makes a community tighter.

All in all a very cool distro, a little slow, but hey it's still faster than gentoo (I mean, in package management terms). Really good artwork, the best splash screen ever, gentoo compatible... I think this distro has really a huge potential. If you're not afraid of Gentoo and are willing to sacrifice a little bit of memory (sorry, I really have a problem with that), it's worth giving it a shot. :)