Monday, August 13, 2007

Sabayon x86_64

Did I say that I had started a new love affair with Sabayon? Let me tell you what I went on an install binge this weekend, Bluewhite64, Slackware 12, and Sabayon x86_64. I was terminally unimpressed with either of the first two, although I'm going to give Bluewhite64 which is a Slack derivative a little more time and play before I pass final judgment on it. Sabayon 64 bit ... All I can say is WOW!!!.

Finally a 64 bit OS that works like I want it to. No tinkering with this that or the other to get some 32 bit app working correctly (Flash). I want to run Warcraft, which has a permanent home on its own partition ... well that did take a tinker just as it did with the 32 bit version. For some reason it didn't ship with opengl compiled in, so you have to re-emerge it with opengl support. Other than that though whammo Warcrack was up and running inside a few minutes.

Here is what I do to any new Linux install within minutes of having it running for the first time.
Visit youtube and see if everything works out of the box (it does for Sabayon 32 and 64 bit)
Drop in a movie and see if I can watch it. (yes again for both versions)
Warcraft (no for both, but it was a really fast fix, and got me the latest wine release to boot)
3D desktop (yes for both 32 and 64 bit) Not that I use it Compiz and Beryl have issues about locking up pretty much any system I have tried them on with I ctrl|alt|F1 to terminal and then try to go back to the desktop. But I like having it available, and I know how to shut them down.

Almost every distro I have ever tried has failed in these tests, which I consider my daily uses. I haven't tried Linux Mint lately, which is from what I hear should pass these simple tests however I have an aversion to most things Ubuntu. I know that Ian Murdock has said Ubuntu is Debian done right, but if I wanted a 6 month old snapshot of Debian Sid I can do that and without the bugs that the Ubuntu folks induce. Dont flame me for the truth here folks, Ubuntu has done wonderful things for Linux, its just that it is a far cry from the end all be all it could be if they would just pay a little more attention to what they were doing, and what their users should EXPECT to see out of the box.

All in all I just made another switch, from 32 bit Sabayon to 64 bit Sabayon. I just get happier and happier the more I use this Distribution. It says alot for them and for the Gentoo community and developers that desktop Linux can be this easy.

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