Sabayon, formerly known as RR4/RR64 Linux, has been built on the unstable branch of Gentoo. Sabayon 4 is the latest ffering from the Sabayon Terminal. 4oh! is a
rolling release, which means you don't have to reinstall the OS if a new version is released; easy updates will be made available for renewal of the OS.

Soon after the initial release, developers released the first revision for Sabayon-i.e., 4r1, This first revision, now bundled with this month's magazine, has a lot of bug fixes and adds a few newer versions of the available software.

Sabayon 4 has not only introduced a rejuvenated operating system, but also a website that makes sure that you won't get lost in finding what you're looking for. The new interface is eye-catching, less cluttered and gels well with the Sabayon 4 artwork. Sabayon 4 is a major leap from version 3, as you will observe significant improvements over the previous stable version. After two years of exhaustive planning and development, developers finally came up with a novel version to enchant audiences with something new and potent. Although it looks to avail all the latest technology, will the new version measure up to its name? Will it be able to uproot the big players? That's exactly what we're here to find out.

My test system had the following specs:

• AMD Phenom X3 8650 overclocked to 2.7 GHz

• 4 GB DDR2 800 MHz RAM @ 1000 MHz

• 640 GB Western Digital Aaks

• AMD 790GX with ATI HD 3300 graphics

• HP's all-in-one 1410 printer

• A 32-bit edition of version 4.0 r1 Oh!

Get, set, go!

After popping in the live DVD you will be greeted with the sheer simplicity of the menus and the impressive boot screen theme. The DVD menu comes with lots of options for booting and installation. You can use it as a live DVD, directly install it on the hard drive and much more ... Apart from this, Sabayon allows you to play high-end games without even leaving the live mode. Booting the OS is quite smooth.

During the boot-up you will note something quite unique. Sabayon developers have added music that plays while booting into the live mode only. So. even if you have a low-end PC. you still won't be bored by the old boot screen's progress bar. After the bootsplash you will be asked to select the desktop type based on desktop effects.

It not only allows you to switch between Compiz and a simple desktop, but also notifies you about your graphics adapter's compatibility with Compiz. Finally, the desktop showed up. Figure 1 shows what the default desktop looks like. My initial impression was one of mild disappointment. Except the artwork, everything else was nearly the same as that of the 3.x edition. The placement and the number of icons haven't changed yet. The default desktop looks haphazard-having so many icons, I believe, can confuse a newbie.

As far as its hardware detection capabilities are concerned, it was unable to configure my resolution correctly. It chose to set it to a resolution of 1024 x 768 pixels instead of 1440 x 900. I to(i)k a sneak peak at the installation options quickly. but there was nothing new to report. Sabayon uses the good-old Anaconda as its installer. It has added nearly all the major desktop environments (Figure 2), and has
a speCific installer option for Netbooks, which looks like a handy addition if you are using such hardware. The installer automatically adds KDE if you select GNOME, and vice versa.

The installation process is pretty awkward. Initially. it even installed KDE, although I had deselected it. However, at the end ofthe installation, it removed the deselected packages. Quite a waste of time, I'd say. The installation of deselected packages could have been skipped. In my system it took a total of23 minutes. I personally have no issues with the time. as Sabayon installs quite a lot of packages. If you select all the options, then you might end up installing more than 12 GB of software.