Sabayon Linux 6.0 adds native Btrfs support

The Sabayon Linux team has announced the arrival of the GNOME and KDE variants of version 6.0 of their Linux distribution. According to the developers, Sabayon 6 is one of the project's biggest milestones and allows "bleeding edge and reliability to coexist".

Sabayon Linux 6.0 is based on the 2.6.39.1 Linux kernel and includes a choice of either GNOME 2.32.2 or KDE 4.6.4 as the desktop environment. The developers say they opted for GNOME 2.32.2 in response to feedback from their community, noting that they have decided to leave GNOME 3.0 out for another release cycle, in order let things to settle down: "providing a broken user experience has never been in our plans".

Other changes include the addition of native support for the Btrfs filesystem and improved theming for 16:9 and 16:10 widescreen monitors. Chromium has been selected as the bundled web browser and the switch from OpenOffice.org to LibreOffice 3.3.3 has been made. Sabayon can now be transformed into a "full-featured" Home Theater PC (HTPC) using the XBMC media center software. Package changes and updates include GCC 4.5.2, Python 2.7, GRUB 1.99, X.Org Server 1.10 and IcedTea6, the newly bundled Java VM.

Named after an egg-yolk based dessert (also known as zabaglione), Sabayon is derived from Gentoo Linux. It is intended to provide a "complete out-of-the-box experience" while being both stable and versatile.

Details about the major update, including a full list of changes and updated packages, are available in the official release announcement. Sabayon Linux 6.0 is available to download for 32- and 64-bit systems from the project's mirrors.

(crve)