Yes, but......
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| vainrveenr May 31, 2007 12:31 PM EDT |
Among other pluses and minuses compared to Sabayon, Ubuntu has
1) a phenomenal online-support community, very arguably one of the best
2) major sponsorship and promotion by Mark Shuttleworth's Canonical
3) a host of developers.... certainly more than 3-4 1) and 2)-related: although I do not particularly favor Ubuntu over other distros, someone recently going to Ubuntu's ShipIt feature for free mailed CDs (https://shipit.ubuntu.com/) happened to be very impressed to have Ubuntu up and working so quickly hassle-free from a shipped CD. Even so, Sabayon certainly seems to have found its bleeding-edge niche. |
| dcparris May 31, 2007 12:53 PM EDT |
#1 is the most important for non-techies. The others tend to rely on a given user's perspective. |
| Sander_Marechal May 31, 2007 1:36 PM EDT |
I'd argue that #2 is important too. Not the money itself, but the free shipit CDs it pays for. I bet shipit is a major contributor to Ubuntu's early uptake and succes. |
| hkwint May 31, 2007 1:55 PM EDT |
Sabayon Linux does have a one click shortcut which directly brings it users into the Sabayon IRC help channel (without any configuration needed, only one click!). Sabayon developers are in that IRC channel to help people too, I understood. They also answer questions which lots of other devels would deem 'stupid'. I also saw questions being answered within 5 minutes in the forum. From personal experiences, I can say Gentoo support and docs is equal to or even better than Ubuntu support and docs. Mots of the time, problems with Sabayon also occur in Gentoo. I must admit I am not used to Ubuntu documentation, but I found it rather hard to find the right documentation when experimenting with Ubuntu. Gentoo documentation seemed better organized in my opinion, but that's probably because I have been using Gentoo docs for more than three years now. Though Sabayon doesn't have a host of developers, it is more up to date than Ubuntu (out of the box) and I understood it offers better Wifi support (also out of the box) than Ubuntu, and my graphical card worked with the SabayonLiveDVD but not with the UbuntuLiveDVD (X froze in Ubuntu), so it seems if you want an up to date distribution, the number of hosts don't have to have much impact really. Also, I understood there were some issues with the stable version of Ubuntu, so in my opinion, Ubuntu is not that good. I didn't try it [Ubuntu] that much, because I work on my light-weight Gentoo (WindowMaker; kind of fluxbox/XFCE but less bloated for those who don't know) box. Anyway, Beryl working on a LiveDVD without any problems, without any configuring (only chosing AIGLX or XGL IIRC) impressed me a lot, and so were the many applications on the LiveDVD. I can't remember having this whole Wow! experience when using Ubuntu. Ubuntu seemed rather the same than Suse to me, except Ubuntu didn't screw up the update process. Haven't tried Sabayon update yet, it seems possible for problems to come up when updating, but they're working on that right now. Like you have read in the interview, they're working on #2. Looking at the current pace of Sabayon-development, I'd say it's a much faster process, even if there are far less developers - than Ubuntu development, but that's only my opinion (I only followed Sabayon Linux development between 3.26 and 3.4 loop 2, which is a short time, and I saw the website and theme change). Probably it helps the three main developers are friends, and use the same language. Looking at the growth of Sabayon Linux at distrowatch (I saw it going up from #9to #5 or so - based on last 30 days statistics, though this is only indicational), I'd say Sabayon Linux isn't a niche, it's for everybody like Ubuntu is. Sabayon's (Beryls?) start menu is far more easy to use than the Ubuntu one, the latter basically being the cumbersome Windows startup menu. Those are a crime to use (and it surprises me this ancient start menu is still in Ubuntu 7.04) for people not used to working with the mouse, like my grandma: If you slip of the start-menu, the whole menu is gone. In my opinion, the Beryl-cube also ads more oversight. Most Windows users don't get the idea of multiple workspaces like we're used to in Linux. However, when they see the cube, they immediately get it; since they can see which applications are where (strange, seems it's not only eye-candy after all). Also, I found the function to 'slide' a window in Sabayon very useful, to read a webpage and type what I read in the page I was working on. Sabayon also offers some free game-(previews), and IIRC also a music-tailored configuration. Probably, you should give it a spin too, using the LiveDVD (if you didn't do so yet). Note: I'm used to Gentoo, which means for me it's easier to work with Sabayon than with Ubuntu. |
| chickpea Jun 01, 2007 8:27 AM EDT |
Just because Ubuntu has more developers does not make them better developers. No knocking Ubuntu, what they have done for the linux community has been phenominal, but SL adds a lot more configurability, stylishness, and cutting-edge cool than Ubuntu has. SL forums are very helpful (even more so than Ubuntu as the knowledge base of SL users is generally more advanced than those on Ubuntu forums). Just one man's voice in the wilderness, but I much prefer SL to Ubuntu (I have tried them both and stuck with SL). |
| Teron Jun 01, 2007 9:45 AM EDT |
This seems to be nice: "This distribution contains proprietary and non-GPL softwares too (like from NVIDIA, ATI, Google, etc). Before running them, be sure to read their license and agree with that, otherwise, just remove those applications. To run SabayonLinux without Proprietary drivers, just use "noproprietary" boot flag." |
| dcparris Jun 01, 2007 10:30 AM EDT |
Seems like they would set it up to use a "proprietary" boot flag, and have it install proprietary as an option - not as a default. Yeah, I know. I'm opening a can of worms. I should stick to Debian or GNewsense. I probably will. :-) |
| Sander_Marechal Jun 01, 2007 11:29 AM EDT |
Don, I have a better idea. Why can the installer or Live CD bootloader not detect that there is hardware present that requires a proprietry driver and ask what to do? Only when the install/boot was done with a "quiet" setting it should default to something. I've always found it strange that an installer can detect all hardware and determine what needs to be configured, but cannot ask the user if he'd like driver A or B for his video card. |
| dcparris Jun 01, 2007 12:50 PM EDT |
Your idea makes sense to me. Not being a "real" hacker, I wouldn't have a clue as to the why's and wherefore's |
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