First Impressions of Sabayon Linux 109
chix4mat writes "Techgage takes a first look at the upcoming Gentoo-based distro 'Sabayon.' It's a feature-filled Live DVD that allows you to install within minutes. Users are treated to a Vista-esque KDE theme, with transparent windows The greatest feature of the distro is the hardware and software support. DVD movies work from the start in addition to audio, bluetooth, WiFi and even XGL."
Program Naming (Score:5, Insightful)
I use linux both at home and at work, so I'm not some anti-linux zealot or something- I think it's a legitimate question to raise. On my mac laptop, I have a handy app for browsing mDNS networks called Rendezvous Browser (since mDNS was once called Rendezvous).
The name is simple and describes perfectly what the program does. On the other hand, 90% of the linux applications available have names that look like they were chosen by picking random letters and squishing them together.
I'm sure that the programmers think they've very clever by choosing a name that means something in some obscure language- or they just thing the name sounds cool- but that simple lack of meaningful names is detrimental. If I start up a GNOME session and want to use network meeting functionality, how is there any possible way that I could guess that "Ekiga" is the application I'm looking for?
Re:Program Naming (Score:3, Interesting)
Linux could use a good marketing team; grassroots can do alot but good marketing is what pushes it over the edge into the mainstream.
Re:Program Naming (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Program Naming (Score:3, Informative)
Joke? (Score:2)
Re:Program Naming (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Program Naming (Score:1)
Re:Program Naming (Score:2)
Now obviously, no one is going to be BUYING Ubuntu (unless they release an Enterprise Edition) but bad marketing can ruin its adoption rate. I mean between 'The Megatron 9000' and 'Ubuntu' I k
Re:Program Naming (Score:1)
So I looked up what it meant, and then thought two things:
Re:Program Naming (Score:2)
I had a friend who made it onto Jeopardy but when Alex Trebek saw the contestants and shook their
Re:Program Naming (Score:1, Funny)
Re:Program Naming (Score:1, Funny)
Everyone has that problem with english language. They have more acronyms than regular words.
Re:Program Naming (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Program Naming (Score:4, Interesting)
There is definitely something to be said for a unique, even quirky identifier--the software becomes a particular thing to be desired and discussed, instead of a tool to be taken for granted.
Re:Program Naming (Score:5, Insightful)
Konqueror can be Web Konqueror. GIMP can be Gnu Photo. Sunbird can be Sun Calendar.
MySQL, RadRails and OpenOffice are great names.
Re:Program Naming (Score:1)
Another possible compromise would just be to make shortcut/launcher menu naming more descriptive: the program itself can be called Firefox or Ekiga if it wants to, so long as its shortcuts indicate its use (and in KDE--probably GNOME as well--that functionality is built in, so that descriptions and program names are separate, and both displayed on menus). That solution doesn't help when you're trying to tell your grandma to download
Re:Program Naming (Score:2)
Re:Program Naming (Score:1)
Re:Program Naming (Score:4, Interesting)
Anyway, getting back on topic – I'm honestly not sure how much of an argument there is here. Generic names like "Internet Explorer" actually tend to cause more confusion in the end – they start associating the blue "E" with the entire Internet, which can get annoying after a while if you know the difference... don't know about GNOME, but I know what KDE likes to do is to provide a generic name/description as well as the program name, so for example, just a couple examples that my own menu lists:
Firefox (Web browser)
The GIMP (Image Editor)
Anyway, just my 2 cents.
Re:Program Naming (Score:1)
I'm not sure about "regular" Gnome, but in Ubuntu I have at least Firefox Web Browser, GIMP Image Editor, Thunderbird (and Evolution) Mail, Ekiga Softphone, Pan Newsreader, Rhythmbox Music Player and even Anjuta IDE and Glade Interface Designer. So, seems like they (whoever they are) like to do it as well.
Re:Program Naming (Score:2)
Re:Program Naming (Score:2)
I remember Delrina's CommSuite from 1995.
There is little in 2006 that you can't be done more simply from within the browser or through a browser extension.
Re: (Score:1)
Re:Program Naming (Score:3, Funny)
(Netscape) Navigator
(Microsoft) Explorer
(KDE) Konqueror
Re:Program Naming (Score:2)
GNOME Meeting can take its trademark from GNOME, but none of its own. If it splits and becomes dissociated from GNOME, then it needs its own name. Plus people like leaving their mark on a project, especially the name.
Re:Program Naming (Score:1)
Re:Program Naming (Score:5, Funny)
Apple: Prepend 'i' to the product name: iMac, iPod, iBall, etc.
Windows: Add "Visual," "Explorer," or "Tycoon" to the product name.
Linux: Prepend 'g', 'k', or 'x' to the product name, depending on whether the product is GNOME-centric, KDE-centric, or non-denominational. Alternately, bang head on keyboard.
Indeed! Cases in point! (Score:3, Insightful)
Microsoft Outlook - Hrm, sounds like this may be some soft of lighthouse control software. Either that, or maybe it will predict the future for me! Combined with Excel I will be unstoppable!
Apple QuickTime - Hrm, sounds like this let's me time-travel using my computer, my making time go faster. Or perhaps it is a timing program for when you are l
Re:Indeed! Cases in point! (Score:2)
What's the difference between Ekiga or Sabayon and Excel/Outlook/Quicktime? Language. The latter are all easily-pronounced words, even if they aren't descriptive of the product's function. FireFox falls into this category as well; all the Mozilla project names are easy on the tongue. Even Mozilla is straight-forward, if a bit nonsensical.
What a lot of people forget is that th
Re:Indeed! Cases in point! (Score:2)
Like... you for one?
What's the problem pronouncing "ekiga" or "sabayon"? I can tell you that Quicktime and Outlook sound ridiculous in Spanish; still they come from great software companies, so they must be all right, mustn't they?
Your problem is exactly the one that maintains tons of people within Microsoft realms: whatever you are widely exposed, you feel "natural", anyt
Re:Indeed! Cases in point! (Score:2)
You didn't read my post, did you? "...if you're going to go to the trouble of translating it to English, it seems to me that it would require relatively little effort to give it an English name as well."
Substitute any other language for "English" and my point still applies. Quicktime and Outlook coul
Re:Indeed! Cases in point! (Score:1)
One piece of vaporware I'd criticize for their naming conventions is E17: let's release 500 projects whose names have nothing to do with their functions aside from their beginning with E. Ecore? Okay. Fine. Evas? I think not. Entice? Way past the line. Ekiga would probably be a viable name if their target ext
Re:Indeed! Cases in point! (Score:2)
Re:Indeed! Cases in point! (Score:1)
Re:Indeed! Cases in point! (Score:2)
The problem is not *naming*, it is *branding*.
No, the problem is *naming*. All those other software names you referenced are either English words ("Excel","Access") or compounds of English words ("PowerPoint","QuickTime"). These are, for English speakers, far superior to foreign or nonsense words like "Sabayan", "Ekiga", or "Xine", which are at best silly and at worst unpronounceable. (Note the success of the English word compound "FireFox".)
Re:Indeed! Cases in point! (Score:1)
Re:Program Naming (Score:5, Funny)
These people are devoting their time to making this software, they aren't getting paid.
I'm sure many of you think they're just crazy hippies but the fact is they have motivations, often political/spiritual for why they want people to have access to this software.
This will affect how the software is developed, it's unavoidable, and you would do well to spend a little time actually investigating the mindset of the FOSS community.
These people are giving you certain abilities you didn't have before, that's why you use their software. And they're hoping you won't use those abilities to say steal someone's identity or take away people's jobs... perhaps they are being naive.
Distro's like Ubuntu have interesting names because they hope you'll check wikipedia before complaining and actually take a look at the philosophy underlying the software they are giving you for free.
Re:Program Naming (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Program Naming (Score:2)
If the linux community had a distro that was ready for the mainstream that the linux crowd backed and couldn't get acceptance then we would have a problem, but joe sixpack will just call it what everyone calls linux.
Linux.
Re:Program Naming (Score:5, Funny)
Why, on my machine, when I want to create a presentation, I have to use something called 'PowerPoint'. For weeks I didn't touch it because I thought it was some sort of weird ACPI tool, and I was shutting down and rebooting enough that I figured I didn't need it.
It turns out I also have an email app called "Outlook" which I thought was a weather forecaster. It hasn't worked well; maybe I should switch -- I see there's a faster version called 'Outlook Express'.
The file system app is called 'Explorer' which is confusingly named the same thing as the web browser.
There's also this thing called "Access" which, as near as I can guess, is a kind of server that's supposed to give everybody on the internet 'access' to my data.
Oh, and I have to click on a button labeled 'Start' to shut down
Re:Program Naming (Score:1)
Re:Program Naming (Score:2)
You wouldn't think so many people would be taking it home just to make steel [uksteel.org.uk] in such small quantities.
Re:Program Naming (Score:1)
GNOME Meeting may be a perfectly "servicable" and "pragmagic" name to you, but suppose your native tongue were, ah... Finnish?
Re:Program Naming (Score:2)
Re:Program Naming (Score:1)
Nerds aren't marketers, and I for one am willing to sacrifice slick names for better apps.
Re:Program Naming (Score:2)
Why do so many linux programmers insist on such crazy naming conventions... On my mac laptop, I have a handy app for browsing mDNS networks called Rendezvous Browser (since mDNS was once called Rendezvous).
And the name of that service changed because they picked a name that meant something and, hence later discovered it had trademark issues. On of my favorite toys is called "SubEthaEdit" but used to be called "hydra." It uses Rendezvous to allow many people to share a text editor with multiple insertion
Re:Program Naming (Score:3, Informative)
Well, sabayon is a real word, from the French (not exactly 'some obscure language') -- it's a sauce made with egg yolks, sugar, and wine. It's very nice on fresh fruit, or desserts that have a little tartness to them. Isn't it nicer to have a product named after a nice sauce than to have one that comes from "alphabet soup"?
As to Ekiga, there might be s
Re:Program Naming (Score:1)
If you don't have the money and advertising then you need to be less 'creative' in the naming department such that the name itself describes the product.
Re:Program Naming (Score:3, Interesting)
There have been thousands of products over the years that succeeded without a descriptive name and without an advertising budget. I would expect this to be even more possible considering the nature of the Linux community and the ease of communication.
Also, one other thought -- I know several CxOs who think that a descriptive name confers 'generic' (and therefore inferior) status on a product. It implies that you're copying a named product. Would you
Re:Program Naming (Score:5, Insightful)
Or they are just being whimsical can don't really care if the the name is business friendly. Most are just programming for fun. I wholeheartedly support the practice of "strange" naming. If Linux, or more generally, FOSS ever loses its whimsical and 'fun' nature, it'll be dead. Programmers get enough marketting pressure and other business related distractions at work. They don't need to come home to their hobby project and get the same pressure to sell themselves to users.
Detrimental to whom, exactly? If I am developing something for fum, what do I care if a few people who merely object to naming don't use my software?
The same way you know that your friend "Joe" is the guy with the dark hair, funny nose, and a good sense of humor. Have you ever asked your friend Joe to change his name to something a little more descriptive?
-matthew
Re:Program Naming (Score:2)
Why is it called "Linux", when it could just as easily be refered to as "Operating System Kernel"?
Re:Program Naming (Score:2)
GNU/OperatingSystemKernel, you mean...
Re:Program Naming (Score:2)
"Why is it called "Linux", when it could just as easily be refered to as "Operating System Kernel"?"
Hmm..OSK? Sounds like an operating system by Kellogs. Would a custom kernel then be called "Special K"?
Sorry, couldn't resist.
Cheers!
Strat
Re:Program Naming (Score:1)
[...]
The name is simple and describes perfectly what the program does. On the other hand, 90% of the linux applications
[...]
I'm sure that the programmers think they've very clever by choosing a name that means something in some obscure language- or they just thing the name sounds cool- but that simple lack of meaningful names is detrimental.
Whatever you think about various program names is fine, but dude... Sabayon is
Nothing new or restricted to FOSS (Score:2)
Lotus 1-2-3
Excel
Paradox
Oracle
Quicken
Access
Quattro Pro
What about the name of Lotus 1-2-3, Excel or Quattro Pro, tell you that they are spreadsheets?
What about Paradox, Oracle, or Access tell you they are databases?
What about Quicken tells you it is for finance?
Oracle, I assume was named after the Oracle of Delphi. Access could be a communications program, video game, or a screen reader.
Lots of really successful programs have really odd names. It is just
Re:Nothing new or restricted to FOSS (Score:2)
Access [wikipedia.org] actually was the name of a communications program from Microsoft at one time.
Vista window decoration (Score:1)
Re:What's Vapor^H^H^H^H^HVista got to do with it? (Score:1, Insightful)
I don't know what has your panties in a bunch, but it's not like OSX is the creme of any crop other than "doesn't suck as much as windows".
Re:What's Vapor^H^H^H^H^HVista got to do with it? (Score:1)
Re:What's Vapor^H^H^H^H^HVista got to do with it? (Score:1, Interesting)
Really? Are you saying that the Quake III window during the XGL/Compiz demo was faked with a prerecorded movie?
XGL allows for full opengl acceleration for 3D, on the desktop, with less overhead than Vista appears to require. (XGL runs faster than an equivalent system with standard Xorg, and it's system requirements are consequently not very high)
Pretty face (Score:2, Funny)
You still have to emerge big time every week, wait days, then reconfigure all of your conf files to work with new versions. High maintenance!
Re:Pretty face (Score:3, Informative)
Works very nicely.
Re:Pretty face (Score:2, Interesting)
You don't have to emerge anything after installation, though you should stay on top of security alerts. You can easily leave your system alone, Portage just makes it easier to stay up to date in a more or less modular fashion. In other words, you don't have to wait six months and download five CD images to stay current from the bottom up.
Re:Pretty face (Score:1)
Your first point agrees with what I said. Your second point doesn't necessarily dispute my use of the phrase "more or less modular", though it greatly exaggerates the nature of software dependencies. More often than not, you do not need to update a program's dependencies in order to correct a security vulnerability. If Frozen Bubble introduces a vulnerable online play mode, its correction need not involve SDL.
Furthermore, security vulnerabilities involving linked librar
Re:Pretty face (Score:1)
e And that KDE theme, has nice window decorations, but thats it - I like my xfce more :)
http://www.paulmer2003.com/new.xfce4.png [paulmer2003.com]
I'd love to try it out (Score:3, Insightful)
Does it allow me to use my WiFi on my laptop without having to do much tweaking. Currently there arent any livecd installers that allow me to browse using WPA while I install (im even having issues with knoppix)
Re:I'd love to try it out (Score:2)
Re:I'd love to try it out (Score:3, Insightful)
In fact thats how long it took on my ancient P3, and an even more ancient AMD laptop. Not that I'm anti Gentoo, its just I like to be able to use my computers during the same season that I start an install.
Re:I'd love to try it out (Score:2)
And not that I'm anti-Ubuntu, but I've learned a ton more using Gentoo than I have using any other easy-to-use distro (Ubuntu,SUSE,Fedora,Mandrake).
Re:I'd love to try it out (Score:2)
It is arguably against the GPL as it stands but language in v3draft2 makes it specificly incompatible because of license issues.
Re:I'd love to try it out (Score:2)
Re:I'd love to try it out (Score:2)
That was both informational and unemotional.
1.) Why?
2.) As I said, I've also worked with SuSE and FC5 (neither of which have LiveCD installs).
3.) If you have a LiveCD it should fully showcase your distrobutions abilities. Failing to recognize hardware indicates to me that Im going to have problems getting
Re:I'd love to try it out (Score:2)
Just a mild shoulder sunburn from the weekend, and I learned how good bourben slush is.
Proprietary drivers? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Proprietary drivers? (Score:3, Funny)
However, of course this means that they can do this all without voiding any license.
Re:Proprietary drivers? (Score:1)
Re:Proprietary drivers? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I'll made my own Linuzzzz distro. I'll call it. (Score:2, Funny)
LK
Sy... what? Sybian Linux? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Wait for the upcoming Lesbian Linux! (Score:1)
This has been out a while now... http://www.lesbian.mine.nu/ [lesbian.mine.nu] (very mildly NSFW, mostly suggestive)
Had to look it up, didn't know it was still around, heh.
Spy
We're sorry, that name is taken. (Score:5, Informative)
Rule number 1 about naming a project -- do a google search. If something else that might be pretty related comes up pretty easily, you've picked a crappy name. In this case Sabayon is already used as the name for GNOME profile editor [gnome.org]. It seems like this has been around much longer too.
Rule number 2 about naming a project -- when naming a project, try to get a domain name that reflects the project. I'm confused about how I would know from a URL like http://www.lxnaydesign.net/ [lxnaydesign.net] that it would be about Sabayon linux.
Remember to play nice boys and girls. And for the Sabayon Linux folks, don't worry, Mozilla [mozilla.com] made the same mistake a few years ago. Clear up the confusion and move on -- it looks like you've got a pretty slick little distro going.
Re:We're sorry, that name is taken. (Score:2)
Rule 3 about naming a project -- don't use an acronym
Rule 4 about naming a project -- should describe what the program actually does
Rule 5 about naming a project -- make a list of > 100 names that could be good
Rule 6 about naming a project -- do not make up a new word unless its compound
and...
Rule 0 about naming a project -- there are no rules
Re:We're sorry, that name is taken. (Score:2)
Also offers a live cd (Score:4, Informative)
sabañón (Score:1)
(= Redness, inflammation and ulceration with itching in mostly hands, feet and ears due to cold.)
Re:sabañón (Score:2)
Bet this one gets crapped on like Kororaa did... (Score:3, Interesting)
The video format (Score:1)
Transparent windows (Score:2)
"Enlightenment had that years ago! That's so 20th century!"
I'm not being served here.