After a good few years of life with Mandriva, I think it’s about time for me to upgrade myself in the world of Linux. I would quite like to leave the world of the n00b binary beginner distro users to the world of advanced super-duper 3133t source-based distros. Well, though, I’m not so technically adept as to switch to something as hardcore as Linux From Scratch, however. Instead, I am now running Sabayon Linux, which is built based upon the popular source-based Gentoo Linux distro, with some modifications of its own, mainly such as the recommendation of the primary use of their binary repository manager Equo, instead of the powerful Gentoo-default Portage system (which is still included though in Sabayon though, with its own Sabayon overlays).

Pardon the many technical terms for my less technically inclined readers, but really, you should take a Linux for a spin, too,  and learn a little more about it.  It’s one of the greatest inventions of the late 20th century that will reduce your fear and apprehension to computers which Windows probably created in you since young.

I guess I got convinced by the arguments for the superiority for a source-compiled system, where everything can be customized and tweaked to run with your processor, your choices. My GCC’s MARCH flag set to -native with a few other “safe” flags and I kind of like to tinker around with the useflags before I go around emerging the software. Well, I wasn’t bold enough to jump from Mandriva to Gentoo, or confident enough to set up my system (wireless; desktop; everything) from scratch, so I landed upon Sabayon, which in earlier years seemed like a specialized gaming distro, but in recent times has seemed to lean towards creating a general desktop distro for all.  The Sabayon LiveCD came with a graphical installer, something people like me can use to build a system with a complete out-of-the-box “everything works” experience with my favourite KDE desktop manager; wireless connection (something most other distros usually disappoint me in) and few essential programs e.g. Firefox ready for use right away. Sure, it was something like cheating, since it would be a binary installation rather than a source installation, but hey, I had to start somewhere right. More to this later.

As I was saying earlier, Sabayon’s key difference from Gentoo, other than installing a binary-based system on the initial install, is the introduction of Equo, which is supposed to be the default package manager for the former. It offers pre-built binaries, though, so customizing it for your system to your taste is not possible with Equo. But actually from the start, I only wanted Sabayon for the easier fresh install, so I wasn’t particularly impressed with Equo. Well, I guess there is actually some disagreement over what needs to be done in my case and how, but I did an “emerge -C sys-apps/entropy app-admin/equo app-admin/sulfur sys-apps/entropy-client-services app-misc/magneto-loader kde-misc/magneto-kde sys-apps/magneto-core" and a few other commands (as inspired from this forum thread) to purge my system of all Equo remains (or I hope I did) and I wrote all the necessary Portage make.conf things in /etc/make.conf, something I think you do in Gentoo but not Sabayon, as the latter must preserve compatibility between its source-based Portage and binary-based Equo, making some Gentoo-inspired Portage manoveurs very risky. But heck it, I’m on my way to trying it out. Now at least my system is not distracted with the binary package manager. Instead, I can focus on using Portage only to build my intended source-optimized system.

Well, first thing I did was to do an “emerge -uDav –newuse world”. Now, I know this exactly isn’t recommended… But I’d supposed that I try just to see how things go… It’s still a fresh system, in any case. If need be, I could wipe the whole thing out and try a different way of doing things. I will see how it goes from here. As I type this post, the world is being emerged afresh… I hold the hands of others in Ubuntu fashion as I pray it all goes well…

Now, back to the accusation of cheating. If all goes well, I’m planning to do some kind of “emerge sabayon-sources“; “localmodconfig” and “genkernel --kernel-config=/usr/src/config --menuconfig --bootloader=grub --splash=sabayon --disklabel --luks all” combo. This, with a a bit more work, should compile for myself a lean, Intel Pentium Processor T2080, hardware-optimized Linux kernel that still gives a perfect out-of-the-box experience, but marginally faster and better. Oh, and source-compiled so I kinda don’t cheat. Building the kernel out of the existing Sabayon base should ensure compatibility and stability, and good for first-timers like me to ensure that I don’t break anything unecessarily.

I had a few preliminary trials with using emerged Firefox versus equo-ed Firefox. Unscientific benchmarks-absent user testing determines that the compiled Firefox outshines the binary with blazingly fast startup speeds and a sort of “snappy feel” to things. Or it could always be placebo.

But in overall, so far, I have been quite satisfied with my Sabayon so far. I haven’t, at least, found any strong reason to go back to binary-based Mandriva. But I’d still recommend Mandriva to newcomers to the Linux world. It is still more user-friendly and although you lose the satisfaction of source-based distros, if I was a newcomer I’d be turned off by the latter. Mandriva’s still more… Graphical? There are some things you cannot do as well on source-based distros if you don’t look at the shell. Portato helps, but only to a certain extent.

My only gripe thus far is that the current Sabayon Linux logo (as seen in the post thumbnail), looks too much like some Adidas logo. I much preferred the older, meanie-looking chicken feet logo. It reeks of aggressive power reminding people of some fighting cock, kinda like what a source-based distro would give.

Tags: 20th century, apprehension, choices, desktop manager, fear, flags, gcc, greatest inventions, linux from scratch, livecd, mandriva, repository manager, sabayon, superiority, wireless desktop

This entry was posted on Friday, May 7th, 2010 at 10:44 am and is filed under The Technical. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.