When you reach the following screen in the installation process you are asked to enter a name for your computer, or to accept a default.
The technical term for this computer name is 'hostname', and one of its uses is to identify your computer on other computers and network equipment (routers etc.) on a network.
Look under the 'Computer name' heading on the installation screen shown above. The default for the hostname is "Set the hostname automatically via DHCP". Now, I have installed SL many times and left this as is. The result was that the hostname of my computer was made "localhost". Not just the alias, you understand, which is also "localhost" and can be left as such, but the actual hostname of the computer.
If you accept the default when you install SL, the file /etc/hosts looks like this:
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# Do not remove the following line, or various programs
# that require network functionality will fail.
127.0.0.1 localhost localhost.localdomain localhost
# IPV6 versions of localhost and co
::1 ip6-localhost ip6-loopback
fe00::0 ip6-localnet
ff00::0 ip6-mcastprefix
ff02::1 ip6-allnodes
fff02::2 ip6-allrouters
ff02::3 ip6-allhosts
the file /etc/conf.d/hostname looks like this:
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HOSTNAME="localhost"
and the file /etc/dhcp/dhclient.conf looks like this:
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send host-name "localhost";
supersede host-name "localhost";
i.e. your computer is telling other nodes (computers, routers etc.) on the network that it is called "localhost". However, other devices are also likely to have an alias "localhost". See where I'm going with this?
I travel a great deal with my laptop, and use wireless and wired networks in many places, such as airports, hotels and different clients' offices. In the latter case, I very often have to connect via a proxy server. Recently I had trouble with domain name resolution with a proxy server, and the IT support staff noticed that my laptop's hostname in the domain name server was listed as "localhost", and the IT support staff requested me to change it, as telling other computers your hostname is "localhost" can cause problems getting connected. So I changed it, or at least tried to. Even though commands such as 'hostname' returned the new hostname I had configured, the proxy server was still seeing my laptop's name as "localhost" (it was only later that I found that the culprit was the file /etc/dhcp/dhclient.conf, which still specified the hostname as the default "localhost"). Anyway, as name resolution was not working, I finally managed to get onto the network by entering the IP address, rather than the hostname, of the proxy server into the Firefox networking connection settings. This was a work-around, but not a final solution to the problem, which was that name resolution was clearly not working.
If you accepted the default when installing Sabayon Linux and you later search through all the files on your computer you'll discover that there are hundreds of files (ASCII and binary) containing the string "localhost" (as comments in many, but not all, cases) and I'm still not entirely sure I've managed to eradicate the hostname "localhost" entirely. Using 'localhost' as a local alias on your computer is fine; using 'localhost' as the hostname leaves you open to potential networking problems.
I should point out that in 99% of cases the hostname 'localhost' does not cause any problems, and I have successfully connected to wired and wireless networks all over the world many times with Linux over the last couple of years. However, I'm giving you a 'heads up' that it is sensible to avoid using "localhost" as a hostname (as distinct from alias), because you may run into trouble somewhere if you connect your computer to a network.
I recommend that you do not accept the default of "Set the hostname automatically via DHCP" when installing SL.
I also recommend that you do not select the alternative "manually" and just leave the default "sabayonx86" or "sabayonx86_64" that is in the input box, because if you install SL onto other computers on the same network they could then all have the same hostname (e.g. "sabayonx86"). This would still be better than a hostname of 'localhost', but still could cause problems for dynamic name resolution on some networks.
So my advice to you is to select "Set the hostname manually" and enter a hostname that you think is unlikely to occur on other computers, routers etc. on your network or on other networks when you are roaming. You can choose anything you want (e.g. "sabayonx86dave", "slx86john", fred911", "davepcno2" or whatever).
(If you have already installed SL and now want to change your hostname, see the SL Wiki article HOWTO: Changing the hostname, which gives the critical changes I know about so far.)
EDIT: Added as an article in the SL Wiki: http://wiki.sabayonlinux.org/index.php? ... ayon_Linux
