[Tfug] Gentoo and Sabayon...*maybe* what I need?

[Jim March]

Guys,

Fedora Core 6 is just fine for ME but I don't see trying to support it for
newbie users.  Auto-updates sometimes do stupid things that I can fix, but
would leave anybody not ready for CLI just stuck.

So.

I've done a bit of reading on Sabayon.  It's a KDE-only critter based
heavily on a Gentoo base - fortunately a stable one at that.  It aims for a
fairly high level of eye candy where possible, and is reputed to have good
video auto-detect systems.

They are claiming 100% compatibility with the Gentoo package management
system (portege) and promise no dependency hell on installation.

Being based in Europe, they've had less problems putting MP3/DVD/DIVX and
other codecs straight into the core.  In my mind that's a plus.

I checked Gentoo's package database and randomly checked to see if things
were up-to-date.  They mostly are - OpenOffice is at 2.1, Firefox at 2.0.0.1,
Gimp is up to date, Wine was down a couple of revs though (they're at 9.29,
release is at 9.31 which FC6 just updated me to today automatically).  So
clearly FC6 is further along by a bit in some ways.

Sabayon is at 3.26 right now and is promising a new version at 3.3 around
the first week of next month.  They also claim a history of clean updates
from one version to another, seem committed to stability...hrm.  They also
seem to be less of a dramatic fork off their root than Ubuntu is off
Debian...it's really Gentoo just cleaned up some.

Anybody have experience with either Sabayon, or at a minimum Gentoo once
it's up and running?

Yes, I *know* it's not .deb compatible.  Sigh.  But then again, if you load
real Debian packages into Ubuntu you can sometimes hose things good.
Sabayon on the other hand is committed to full Gentoo package compatibility.

It would mean jumping from Gnome to KDE personally, but...I've pretty much
figured out I'll have to eventually.  KDE's planned direction on 4.0 (alpha
verging on beta right now) looks pretty damn good.

Anybody know more about this stuff, esp. any nasty traps?

Jim