from ubuntu to sabayon

[plutus]

I'm considering making the shift from ubuntu to sabayon as on my laptop is much faster than Jaunty! (and I tested only the live dvd..really impressive!)

I have some questions:
-the package manager seems to me much slower than synaptic and I had the impression that there is less software available: true? Just an example: I was looking for a GUI package for mounting iso images (gmount-iso under ubuntu) and I could not find anything..

-what is the format of the compiled packages? clearly not deb nor rpm..

-is it possible to automount usb drives? (without using the bottom right icons)

-I found the fonts rendering worse than what I'm used to in ubuntu (especially in the upcoming Karmic): is there a way to improve the fonts? In particular in Firefox, fonts are not really nice..

thanks!

[Theta]

-what is the format of the compiled packages? clearly not deb nor rpm..

.ebuild, as far as I know. (Sabayon is based on Gentoo)

-is it possible to automount usb drives? (without using the bottom right icons)

I just go to Places > Click USB Drive. While I realized this isn't "Automount", it is done without using the bottom-right icons.

-I found the fonts rendering worse than what I'm used to in ubuntu (especially in the upcoming Karmic): is there a way to improve the fonts? In particular in Firefox, fonts are not really nice..

How do you have your fonts Rendered? (Preferences > Appearances > Fonts)

[plutus]

I just go to Places > Click USB Drive. While I realized this isn't "Automount", it is done without using the bottom-right icons.

in ubuntu usb drives are directly accessible on the desktop

How do you have your fonts Rendered? (Preferences > Appearances > Fonts)

subpixel smoothing

[Theta]

in ubuntu usb drives are directly accessible on the desktop

I know Someone with more experience may have a better solution to your problem, it has never been an inconvenience to me (as I rarely use the desktop anyway, and it automounting and popping up is annoying to me), so I do not know.


As for your font rendering problem, I am unable to help, they work fine for me

[Fitzcarraldo]

in ubuntu usb drives are directly accessible on the desktop

Don't know what is possible under the GNOME edition of SL as I hardly use GNOME at all these days. As far as the KDE 4 edition is concerned, auto mounting of USB pen drives and external HDDs is is another function that was available in KDE 3.5.10 but not KDE 4.3.1.

There's a KDE 4 bug report open for this: Bug 164053: KDE should automatically mount all removable media at logon or when plugging in and there is draft auto mount code to do it already but it's not incorporated in KDE 4.3.1.

However, I suspect that auto mounting of pen drives and external USB HDDs is already possible anyway in KDE 4.3.1 by creating the appropriate Desktop Config file in /usr/share/apps/solid/actions/, similarly to what I did under KDE 4.2.4 to automount Audio CDs: KDE 4.2.4: No option in Device Notifier to play Audio CD.

Of course, if your USB drives are always plugged in to your PC then you can simply add them to /etc/fstab. See Re: KDE 4.2 Dolphin automount NTFS on boot and mount existing removeable hdd for details.

[plutus]

I prefer using gnome..

[vampirecoffee]

In Gnome, you can set up your desktop to show all volumes that you currently have mounted (which IIRC means secondary hard drives and USB drives). The option is in gconf-editor under apps -> nautilus -> desktop and is called "volumes_visible". USB drives will automount by default, so they'll show up on the desktop as soon as the computer recognizes them.

I haven't used the GUI for Entropy, but the terminal commands for Entropy are about as fast as the ones for the package manager in Ubuntu. Entropy has had pretty much everything I've ever wanted to install, since it includes a good bit of the Portage tree. You can also use Portage, which is slower because it has to compile everything from source, but has an absurdly vast selection of programs.

[plutus]

how do I get portage and entropy?

[Fitzcarraldo]

You already have Portage and Entropy. To learn how to use them, see the Sabayon Linux Wiki articles (the link to the SL Wiki is at top right of this page). Start by reading the two Wiki articles titled Introduction and Entropy Package Manager. The former has links to articles on how to use Portage.

[plutus]

thanks for your kindness