Sabayon Linux 3.19 | Overview
The “beginner-friendly” Gentoo-based Linux distro.
What’s Sabayon Linux?
Sabayon is a beginner-friendly Gentoo-based open-source Linux distribution. We aim to deliver the best “out of the box” user experience by providing the latest open source technologies in an elegant format.
Sabayon basically aims to be a beginner-friendly Linux distribution based on Gentoo, one of the (if not the) least beginner-friendly Linux distributions around.
Thoughts
Sabayon Linux has a slight existential crisis right now (June 2020). The latest “stable” iso is version 19.03 and not only is it several years old, but it is also completely broken; a single upgrade will brick the entire OS. It’s a known issue, too; the developers recommend people use the “daily” iso instead.
Despite the current state of Sabayon Linux, the project is ambitious. Most of the work to make Gentoo feel “beginner-friendly” is handled by special Sabayon tooling to make updates and app installs feel “normal” and comparable to any other Linux distro.
I think the idea of a Gentoo-based Linux distribution having a “stable” branch is just silly. I could see Sabayon being the Gentoo equivalent to Manjaro with a semi-rolling release model.
But Sabayon has some major hurdles to jump before it is anywhere close to being ready to install as a desktop daily driver.
