I have reviewed Sabayon before. Here I am reviewing the latest version. I said before that while Sabayon has a lot of cool features and looks, the performance requirements are too taxing on most computers, which goes somewhat against the trend set by most Linux distributions [of being able to work well on older (6-7 years) computers]. Follow the jump to see what I think now.
Here I have a picture of Firefox (3.6, the latest version) running along with the Kickoff main menu. I'm not that much of a fan of the new baby-blue theme (I much preferred the previous glossy black theme) but I guess it's still OK. Firefox could play YouTube videos and show Facebook (with chat) out of the box. Integration of Firefox with KDE 4 is excellent, with no ugly-looking toolbars or scrollbars
I was really happy to see that KWin compositing effects worked right out of the box, which has never happened for me before. The next few pictures will display some of that. In order, they show the multiple desktop cube (you can even see the open Firefox window on the, the "snow" effect, the flipping-effect window switcher, and window translucency when a window is being dragged.
The next few pictures deal with OpenOffice.org. I would say this is the best-integrated I have seen OpenOffice.org with KDE 4. This also deals with KDE 4.4's new tabbed window feature. I was all excited about it as it meant that it would free up valuable taskbar space...until I found out that it didn't. All windows grouped together still appear separately on the taskbar. While it kind of saves screen space, it is more or less a waste. Also, the other picture shows that just as in #!, each window can have its own transparency level (Calc is set to 100% opacity, Writer to 90%).
As I mentioned earlier, this is the first time that I have used KDE 4.4. I was extraordinarily pleased with it: I experienced no Plasma crashes, and the speed was far faster than I have ever seen in a KDE 4.x distribution, especially compared to Sabayon 5.0's KDE 4.2 (I think).
I wasn't too pleased with the default theme, though. I think the baby-blue-like theme is a step backwards from the awesome-looking glossy black theme of Sabayon 5.0 (which I have reviewed here).
Overall, I am really happy with Sabayon and may even consider installing it on my computer (alongside initially but maybe eventually as a replacement for Linux Mint).
