GNOMExperience

The GNOME desktop (v2.26.3) greets you with GNOME Do right in the centre of the screen. Check it out; it’s a very innovative application launcher. The top and bottom panels are somewhat customised—the workspace switcher is on the top right beside the clock, while detected mountable partitions are on the right side of the bottom panel. I certainly can’t figure out the reasoning behind this sort of customisation.

Figure 5: GNOME live desktop; GNOME Do in the centre

The desktop theme is based on the greyish ClearlooksSL theme for controls, and the black MurrineCleanGlass window border theme, which gels well with the overall Sabayon look. Unlike KDE, desktop effects don’t work out-of-the-box here. You’ll need to activate the Compiz Fusion-based effects by double clicking the ‘Compiz Fusion Icon’ on your desktop. When activated, it triggers the Emerald Theme Manager to load up (accessible from the system tray), which gives you a handy selection of themes to choose from. On the down side, enabling Compiz gets rid of the Alt+F2 shortcut association to trigger the run dialogue on my system. A very displeasing bug!

There are two volume mixers on the top panel—one  near the system tray, and the other, right next to GNOME menu. While the former doesn’t work on my system, the latter does.

The default media player app is Totem for both videos and audio, and is capable of handling most media formats you throw at it. Rhythmbox is missing, which I would have preferred for handling my audio files. The XMMS clone called Audacious2 is available to fill the gap, if we don’t like Totem to handle audio. Besides these two apps, the ‘Sound & Video’ section has dvd::rip, Brasero Disc Burner, XBMC, and a bunch of Pulse Audio controls. Talking about PulseAudio, the controls don’t work on my system—so I figure the integration is incomplete.

Unlike its KDE counterpart, the GNOME version comes with GIMP besides the F-Spot Photo Manager. However, by default, GIMP is associated as the viewer for images instead of F-Spot. We also have the full OpenOffice.org office suite and Evince to open PDFs.

As for Internet apps, we have the Deluge Bittorrent client, GNOME PPP, Firefox, Pidgin, a remote desktop client, XChat and Wicd (yet again, when we already have a working NetworkManager). Yes, there’re a number of GNOME games available too—but that’s all. So, if you want more apps, then install the distro and use Sulfur to install the apps you require.

Figure 6: Enjoying last.fm in Firefox; F-Spot photo manager in the background

My experience

Overall, Sabayon is indeed a lovely distro. It looks great and is quite stable, yet it somehow gives the feeling that there’s something missing, reminding me of the song, “All you need is love, love, love… Love is all you need.” Or do I feel this way because I’m just too used to the mainstream Mandriva and the likes?

Whatever the reason, Sabayon does look pretty rough around the edges—a good example is the package manager, and the default selection of apps. So I figure it does need a lot of love if it wants to  compete in the mainstream.

By the way, Sabayon comes preinstalled with a demo version of the World of Goo. It’s very addictive; give it a try, if you haven’t already!