Evaluating Sabayon Linux Xfce

[Fitzcarraldo]

http://fitzcarraldoblog.wordpress.com/2 ... inux-xfce/

[kenoby]

Nice review. Haven't had the problems with installer though.

We have quite similar hardware, with exception of SSD in mine, and upgraded wifi card.

Any special reason why you pick gl in Mplayer?
Anyway, pleasant read. WIsh I could convert my wife to Linux too haha.

[Fitzcarraldo]

Thanks.

Any special reason why you pick gl in Mplayer?

I could not see the trailers, so I selected 'gl' (OpenGL) in GNOME-MPlayer, although I have just tried 'xv' (XVideo) and that also works. So my answer to your question should be: "No special reason." I've updated my review accordingly.

[wolfden]

I setup my partitions ahead of time also. My theory is, the lesser the installer has to do, lesser chance of it crashing and anaconda loves to crash.

XFCE has really come around and is now my top favorite desktop environment. Although projects like MATE and Razor-qt have really been coming up more and more popular. Maybe gnome 3 can be usable again when a nice gnome-shell fork comes along that I like. Cinnamon is ok, but still not my thing. I haven't tried the latest cinnamon yet either and I heard good things about it and the project is very active. Unless XFCE does something totally funky like Gnome 3 did, I will be sticking it out with them.

[Fitzcarraldo]

Yes, I like Xfce too, and am impressed by how much it has improved. I like KDE's very comprehensive configurability, but Xfce is getting better and better at providing comprehensive configuration options and is perfectly capable of being used on 'serious' installations at work as well. Xfce imposes a much lower load on the CPU and GPU than does KDE. Also, Xfce seems less buggy than KDE (a few things in KDE, such as Phonon and some KDE apps, definitely require more work). KDE is bloated, really, which is why I only use it on my main laptop (Core i7). Xfce is a great choice for any machine, and the SL implementation of it works well on the Acer Aspire 5920 laptop that I describe in my blog post. In fact, Entropy works like a charm on it too, and I'm very pleased with the result. As you wrote, wolfden, providing Xfce does not 'do a GNOME 3', the future looks good for Xfce.

[kenoby]

Cinnamon is ok, but still not my thing. I haven't tried the latest cinnamon yet either and I heard good things about it and the project is very active. Unless XFCE does something totally funky like Gnome 3 did, I will be sticking it out with them.

Just personal opinion here, Cinnamon has been getting better and better with every release. With 1.6 its a real gem, running it on GM965 and 4GB ram as main WM without any graphical or load issues. Found some minor bugs running it on Sabayon though, but no showstoppers.

[wolfden]

yes, if I had to run gnome 3, I would make sure cinnamon was default gnome-shell