The most cool and high-tech linux distribution out there has released a new major version that succeeds the amazing tenth edition that brought many exciting improvements.
This time it is about polishing and improving existing technologies while offering more support for modern technologies like the Nvidia Optimus and Valve’s Steam!
One of the most valuable things that this Gentoo-based distribution is offering is the almost perfect rolling experience. The eleventh release promises to be closer to the golden mean of latest and stable. A bi-monthly release model is on the plan on the road to 12.
Sabayon 11 is perfectly bootable on systems with Secure boot enabled through shim. Also, all the x86_64 live images can boot and install on {U,}EFI only systems through GRUB bootloader.
Many are the different flavors of Sabayon Linux, but what interests us is the Gnome versions that comes with Gnome Shell 3.6.2, Linux 3.7.4, a small but comprehensive default selection of installed applications that include GIMP, LibreOffice (4.0 coming soon), Guake terminal and XBMC 12!
Rigo, the Google-style graphical application browser, received a tremendous set of small but important speed and usability improvements.
On the gaming front that represents the main reason to use Sabayon for a large portion of the userbase, you will be pleased to know that Sabayon 11 brings exciting new things to help you sink in your preferred gaming experience with the optimum battery life and performance.
First of all, Valve’s Steam digital distribution tool can be found in the official repositories and installed with the pressing of a mouse click.
Sabayon 11 also gained out of the box support for NVIDIA Optimus through Bumblebee (and bbswitch). Optimus systems are automatically detected and configured on your behalf if an NVIDIA GPU, an Intel GPU and NVIDIA proprietary drivers are installed.
Sabayon is one of the best choices for Gnome fans, bringing the latest and greatest to the hands of the users, while ensuring at the same time that things don’t brake constantly. I personally used Sabayon for short period of times and had the best of experiences every time.
This new release makes the project more “mature” as the amazing little tools that make it special like Rigo were greatly improved for the benefit of the users. The online help from other users is amazing (chat and forums), so don’t hesitate to go for it!