Planet Sabayon Linux

As you all may have seen, I’ve been really busy lately producing some very awaited new releases together with our small but powerful development team.

So, we’re close to 2010 and Entropy is about to celebrate its third birthday. It’s been a very long road, full of obstacles but hey, we’re getting closer to 1.0! 2010 will be the year of Entropy 1.0 bringing a basic set of features and ideas tossed into the wild software jungle.

What can we all expect from Entropy 1.0 and perhaps, 1.0+? Well, first of all let’s list some features that are not yet available for public consuption which I am working on, I mean, minor and major things. Of course, everybody could read my cryptic TODO file inside the Entropy git repo, but as written, it’s cryptic because it only has to fit my purposes, not yours .
During the end of 2009, Entropy went through a lot of refactoring and speed improvement work, not yet complete though. All the core modules have been redesigned, a lot of code (around 2 millions of line changes, I’m close to the 5000th commit) has been rewritten with beauty, coolness and ZOMG in mind. Starting from the latest entropy.graph code to entropy.cache (Entropy async on-disk cacher there). Even the equo old and dusty codebase got a rewrite. The only parts missing are Sulfur (usability & speed), entropy.client and entropy.server modules, which are set for rewrite during Entropy 0.99.40 development cycle (we’re at 0.99.19 now, getting closer to the 0.99.20 milestone).

During Christmas holidays, while studying Calculus and Algebra for January exams spin, I am focusing on adding GPG support to Entropy, which is almost complete already, I need to commit some last bits to connect my newly created entropy.security.Repository class to the rest of the world . So yeah, another cool feature is coming to town! For the paranoid part of you!

A few lines above I mentioned Sulfur, what is going to happen in 2010? Let me tell you in a few words, bring {Google Market, Apple AppStore, Nokia Ovi, You-Name-It} apps design and concept to the Linux Desktop, defining a protocol for producing $HOME resident applications and a service platform hosted @sabayon.org.

I spent 3 years to make an almost perfect rocket-science-ready package manager, now it’s time to innovate (funds apart).

The Sabayon Linux CoreCD 5.1 release is available for download now at Sabayon’s mirror sites:http://www.sabayonlinux.org/mirrors

This updated release keeps with the tradition of the CoreCD 4.2 release. The CoreCD is designed with a minimalistic feature set to provide a foundation for building a customized installation tailored to the users specific needs.

As with the previous CoreCD release, CoreCD is a text-based release. There is no X-Server, Gnome, or KDE
provided.

Feature list:
• Bootable Image suitable for a CD or USB thumb drive (~300MB-350MB)
• Text-Based installer
• Basic default networking
• Entropy and Portage ready

The CoreCD release is targeted to advanced users who want to take full control of the features and packages installed on their system. Sabayon’s Entropy package manager can be utilized as soon as the CoreCD release is installed to quickly build out the installation based on the users exact requirements. The CoreCD also has the capability to install packages using the Portage package management system.

For more information, please see the “Visual Tour: CoreCD” on Sabayon’s Wiki.

Networking Notes: Advanced user skills may be necessary to implement networking on the CoreCD. The CoreCD can provide simple dhcp networking over wired networks by default. Most advanced networking configurations will require configuration by the user, possibly requiring “chroot-ing” into the CoreCD environment from another Linux environment with working networking.

I just love twitter, especially right after we do a release. The #Sabayon tweets just rise up in record numbers. My favorite twitter client is TweetDeck. I can setup a column that just sits and monitors for #Sabayon. I see all the tweets and can holler out to people. I was able to get TweetDeck working on my funtoo install, but it really raises havoc with the web browser when it came to flash sites. It just literally crashed the browser right off my desktop. So, it does work on the linux, but really isn’t the desired effect I was hoping for. I usually bounce between twittux and there is a firefox add-on that isn’t to bad either. I really like having the search/monitor feature tho. I do hope TweetDeck picks up Identi.ca in the future #Sabayon.   If anyone has a great method of using TweetDeck and keeping a stable environment, let me know.

So last night, I am looking over the recent #Sabayon posts and find that Linux Live USB Creator has a beta version out that now supports Sabayon.  This is great news as it is another powerful tool for people to use to try out Sabayon.  It’s a simple windows program that allows you to turn a USB key into a bootable operating system.  What is really nice about this, you can use it and boot it up right in windows.  No need to reboot to use it.  It has the option to download, you will need internet for this option, a portable Sun VirtualBox version.  It’s the portable version, so it’s not installing stuff on your computer ever.  It’s completely safe to use this option.  Now you can fire up Sabayon right up on your desktop.  How cool is that?  I highly recommend that you adjust the settings in VB first as the defaults are set too low.  I went in and bumped up the RAM and Video RAM, this produced a much better experience for me.  So now I have my USB key and all I have to simply do is insert it into any computer and I can launch Sabayon through the VirtualBox.  The interface is straight forward, awesome!

Linux Live USB Creator

Of course you can not install Sabayon from within Windows.  You will need to boot the computer up with the USB key to do your installation. Booting up the computer with the USB key is same thing as booting it up with a dvd disk.  I did notice tho, the menu options aren’t there like they normally are.  You just have to hit enter if you don’t need to add any cheat codes in.  Linux Live USB Creator has persistence abilities also, I’m not sure how that works.  I know what it is, but don’t know with what it works with.  I encourage you to check out the homepage and read through the FAQ and Guides.  If you find the program useful, drop the guy a small donation too.  It’s things like this that make things easier for people.  Remember tho, if you want to try this out, You Must Have the Beta Version 2.3 Beta.

My Windows 7 Desktop

Linux Live USB Creator in Action

A quick side note, core-cd rc1 has been released out to the testing team.  Mitch is doing a fantastic job at cleaning it up.  Last I saw, it was only at like 378mb in size.  I’m hoping we can get this released soon.  I believe he had to make a couple more changes and than I am sure it will be golden.   So hold on, it’s coming!

Why VLOS you may ask, well hang on and you will see how Sabayon’s entropy and molecule is helping others produce their own distros. I was browsing distrowatch the other night and noticed that VLOS has come back to life. I thought to myself, hey, I had tried that distro out back in like 2006. I started checking it out and I soon discovered that VLOS is using the entropy package manager and it’s built off of Daniel Robbins’s funtoo stages.  So you start off with the ground work of funtoo and than maintain it with entropy via the vidalinux repository. They do manage their own repository and branches, currently at a branch 2 setting. I was able to switch out the repositories config file and load Sabayon’s default one. There is a lot of sabayon in VLOS and I felt right at home. Even tho it is an alpha release, it ran great for me. You can find their package list to see what is all included. The installer is the same installer we currently use. You’ll see a lot of Sabayon stuff as you use it.  I have no idea who or what is behind this project tho.  The documentation on their website is kinda scarce and not sure what their future plans are.

Gnome is the default desktop

VLOS Gnome Desktop amd64

Desktop stuff in action – notice the sabayonuser

VLOS Busy Desktop

And the ever famous Sulfur

VLOS and Sulfur

This is the second distro that I know of that is using entropy as their main package manager.  Cuba came out with a distro called Nova a while back and they are using entropy.  I have no experience with their distro.  We currently have another guy developing another linux distro based on Sabayon tools also. This is all good and exciting stuff to see.  Sabayon Linux is making a difference for many.    I would like to hear from those that are currently using our tools to build their distros.  Drop us a line and let us know.   If you are looking to do something like this, I suggest looking at molecule.  Fabio should be proud of himself and the best part, he is willing to help these developers.  He will take the time out of his busy day and answer questions.

If you are using Limbo repository with your sabayon linux, sys-kernel/linux-sabayon-2.6.32 has been added to it. It doesn’t get automatically pulled with equo world, but the other files will. Now for me, my experience was fine. I am world updated with limbo and have the nvidia-drivers unmasked (GeForce 9500 GT). I went ahead and did the equo update && equo world. Once that was done, I did equo install linux-sabayon and than equo install nvidia-drivers. Remember after kernel installs, your drivers/modules need to match up. The install of the kernel doesn’t pull these. Installing the linux-sabayon should set your eselect kernel list properly and also edit your grub.conf file properly, double check to make sure. I had no issues with x11-drivers/xf86-input-xxxxxx drivers without reinstalling them.

If you are an ATI user, apparently the ati-drivers don’t work yet, so you will need to use the xorg-x11 open source drivers. Joost has a 3870 HD ATI and X was unusable with the ati-drivers. He also says you can try appending nomodeset or radeon.modeset=0 to your grub line if having problems with open source drivers. darthlukan reports with his ATI XPRESS 200M Radeon and open source drivers, all good and didn’t have to append anything.

Of course your mileage will vary, you been warned. I would be curious to your finding tho. Click on title to leave comment.

Now that Fabio has released Sabayon 5.1-r1 mini-dvds, you might be wondering what is up with the -r1 appended to the iso file. This seems to cause confusion every time we do this and we try to avoid it, but we had 5.0 iso and were set to release it, but we discovered some last minute bugs and caused a slight delay in release. So our 5.1 iso was revised to revision 1 to take care of the bugs for release. It’s all good, and no there will not be a -r2 or -r3 release of 5.1. The next release at this time is slotted for a 5.2 release.

You may remember my last post on Sabayon with Gnome Shell. Well, with the release of 5.1-r1 Gnome, gnome-shell is included and you can try it out for yourself. Please see my previous post for screenshots of gnome-shell in action.

If you have 5.0 Gnome and been rolling it along and would like to have gnome-shell also to play with, you can install it via our overlay or via entropy with equo install gnome-shell or emerge gnome-shell if using our overlay. It appears we also need to install equo install gir-repository also, emerge it if using portage. To start the gnome-shell interface open up terminal and type in gnome-shell –replace as user, don’t need to sudo or su and it should kick in. To get your desktop back to normal gnome, just close the terminal box. You should be able to start it up with gnome-shell –replace& if you don’t want to keep the terminal box open. I would love to hear feedback on what you guys think of gnome-shell.

Oh yea, one big change on the mini-dvd is the usernames and passwords. They always use to be root with password root and sabayonuser with password sabayonuser. The user names are the same, but there is no passwords now. So if you punch in su on the live mini-dvd, you will get the password prompt, just hit enter and you will be root. I found that hard to get use to after all these years. I kept typing in root by habit and than it would spit the authentication fail message at me. So remember, live mini-dvd, just hit enter if asked for password.

I hope your experiences with Sabayon 5.1-r1 are good. It took a bit longer to get it here, but I think you will find it was worth the wait. I’m hoping Mitch can get the core-cd out now also, so keep an eye out for that release.

Press Release: Sabayon Linux x86/x86-64 5.1 GNOME and KDE

Visual Tours:

• Take a Tour – Booting (GNOME)
• Take a Tour – Installer (GNOME)
• Take a Tour – Booting (KDE)
• Take a Tour – Installer (KDE)

Features of Sabayon 5.1

• Based on new GCC 4.4.1 and Glibc 2.10
• Shipped with Desktop-optimized Linux kernel 2.6.31 (ready for 2.6.32)
• Providing extra Server-optimized and OpenVZ-enabled kernels in repositories
• Installer now available in multiple languages
• Complete Ext4 filesystem support (used by default)
• Complete Encrypted filesystems support (via dmcrypt, available in the Installer)
• Featuring X.Org 7.5 and up-to-date FLOSS, NVIDIA, AMD video drivers
• Containing GNOME 2.28 (with GNOME Shell!) and KDE 4.3.4
• Outstanding 3D Desktop applications (Compiz, Compiz Fusion and KWin) working out of the box
• Bringing Entropy Framework (Package Manager) 0.99.19.1
• Shipped with OpenOffice 3.1 productivity suite, Multimedia applications
• Transform Sabayon into an full-featured HTPC Operating System (Media Center) using XBMC
• Shipped with World of Goo Demo – best 2D game ever!
• Sexiest Skin ever! (Ian Whyman rocks)
• Try it out from Windows, just kick the DVD in and use Sabayon via QEMU virtualization!
• Ready for Sabayon 6 (someday!)

Updates since Sabayon 5.o:

• KDE updated to 4.3.4 and now more integrated than ever!
• GNOME update to 2.28 and the outstanding new Desktop concept brought by GNOME Shell (available on DVD)
• Added the ability to try Sabayon under Windows via QEMU
• No more passwords to remember on Live system, just hit the Enter key
• Improved HDTV screens detection
• Entropy Framework updated to 0.99.19.1, featuring outstanding performance, tons of bugfixes and features (see our Git repos)
• More than 4000 new updated packages available
• Slightly improved Live boot speed
• Thanks to our Community, more than 120 new bugs were closed (see: Bugzilla) during this release cycle

Requirements

- an i686-compatible Processor (Intel Pentium Pro, Pentium II, Celeron, AMD K6-2, Athlon)
- 512Mb RAM
- 9 GB of free space
- A X.Org supported 2D GPU
- a DVD reader
Optimal requirements:
- a Dual Core Processor (Intel Core 2 Duo or better, AMD Athlon 64 X2 or better)
- 1024Mb RAM
- 20 GB of free space
- A X.Org supported 3D GPU (Intel, AMD, NVIDIA) (esp. for XBMC)
- a DVD reader

Resources for Sabayon Linux 5.1 GNOME and KDE:

Kernel Configuration:
- Sabayon 5.1 x86 kernel config
- Sabayon 5.1 amd64 kernel config
Packages list:
- Sabayon Linux x86 5.1 KDE Packages
- Sabayon Linux x86-64 5.1 KDE Packages
- Sabayon Linux x86 5.1 GNOME Packages
- Sabayon Linux x86-64 5.1 GNOME Packages

Download sources

Our Mirrors Page:
- http://www.sabayon.org/download
Bittorrent:
- Sabayon Linux x86 5.1 KDE Torrent Download
- Sabayon Linux x86-64 5.1 KDE Torrent Download
- Sabayon Linux x86 5.1 GNOME Torrent Download
- Sabayon Linux x86-64 5.1 GNOME Torrent Download

This is my first look at gnome shell.  I guess this is going to be the big thing for gnome when gnome 3 comes out in 2010.  Gnome shell is in it’s early stages yet.  I miss having the ability to place things on the panel.  Normally on my gnome, I have my favorite apps on the top panel so they are easy access.  With gnome shell I have to browse for my favorite apps.  I don’t understand that with these desktop environments of today.  Why does anyone want to scroll around looking for applications?  In KDE4 I just started using the Alt F2 button and typing in the application.  Well in gnome shell, it didn’t take me long to hit the Alt F2 to fire up my applications.  It’s a lot faster than scrolling around looking for an application.

Some screens of Gnome Shell running on Sabayon Core-CD, click images for larger:

Here we can see activities and the menu system.

Here is the Alt + Tab function and as you hover over the items you get to see a larger version of it.

Here is where you can see all the active stuff and can click on the one you want to go to.

I installed all of this with the gnome overlay via portage.  This isn’t in entropy and shouldn’t be done on a productive system.  The current gnome in gnome overlay is the 2.29 unstable version.  Now if you want to help out the Gentoo gnome devs and do testing and reporting, take a read here.  This would only be for the experienced users.

It’s too early to give gnome shell a fair review so I will leave it at something that is going to be interesting as it matures.  I still need to learn more about it and hopefully I can pass information along as I go.  I guess if anyone out there gives it a whirl, I wouldn’t mind hearing your thoughts on it.