Installing over Ubuntu
 

Hello,

I've currently got Ubuntu on my laptop and I'd like to replace it with Sabayon 6 CoreCDX. I'm also dual-booting with Windows XP. I find the howtos on the Sabayon Wiki a bit confusing, and I've been estranged from Linux for quite a while, so I'd really appreciate some advice on how to do this, and whether Sabayon's own installer is all I need to get the partitioning right?

Thanks.

Hello,

If you want to fully get rid of ubuntu, I would just use the existing partitions and remove all data from them, then just use those to install Sabayon to. I never messed with that distro; Is it a GUI installer, or a text-based installer?

Cheers,

Josh

Probably over-stated.
Looks like it's changed a bit since I looked at it (when it was reasonably new). Gentoo based, still uses portage repos. Looks like a less "experienced" user-base than I recall from gentoo - hence some of the install wiki entry confusion maybe. I'd just install over the top of the current Ubuntu partition(s) - saves any hassle.
Let grub write to the MBR to maintain dual-booting (ignore the BCD info in the wiki - doesn't apply to XP). If I was you (OP) I'd also ignore LVM - just do a basic install.

OK, thank you very much for the advice! One of the main reasons I went for CoreCDX is because the Wiki says that the other versions require something like 12 to 20GB or more of disk space to install, which sounds crazy to me, and my laptop only has a 40GB capacity hard disk.

Does anyone know if there is a reason for such a high space requirement? Is it an exaggeration?

@corp769: it has a GUI installer, even the CoreCDX version.

Look at here,
Is gaming the ALL in One to download? Most Complete?

http://mirror.internode.on.net/pub/s...nux/iso/daily/

I stopped using gentoo on (old) laptops due to the compile times. Also portage can take up a bit of space. Updates to Sabayon look like they still compile from source.
There are good binary only distros that allow you to do whatever you want. I still like Arch - it was the first I found that was compiled (entirely) for i686 and allowed a small setup.
Lots of ex-gentoo people there. Might be an option for you.

Thanks for the advice - maybe I'll look into Arch some day. Sabayon docs say that you can use either Portage or Entropy, and the latter is binary, though based on the Portage repositories. I used to use Gentoo, and strangely enough I never noticed that compiling from source took a long time. I did notice the disk space usage, but I'm sure you can just clean out the source code once it's compiled, if you don't want it, and that's something it's easy to forget to do.

Old laptop, 40GB hdd -- how much RAM?
Try either a Debian-based distro like SwiftLinux
or a Slackware-based one like Zenwalk Basic or NimbleX,
as a suggestion.

And why not Debian or Slackware themselves?

Thanks. It is an old laptop, but it's a ThinkPad T41p, so has pretty good specs for its time - it has 1GB RAM for example.

Actually what I had an issue with was heat. One laptop in particular used to just conk out after a few hours compiling. Eventually I had to raise it off the desk and aim a desk fan at it to get the job done.
Was never able to get gnome to complete, so gave the idea away. Figured if I was going to have to use a binary for that, might just as well make the leap.

My suggestion is to try the LXDE version. Runs smootly even on old PCs, and uses little space. Installer is graphical, is the same of Red Hat. When asked, just say you want to replace existing linux systems, Sabayon will take care of everything.

On second thoughts, I decided against Sabayon and installed Arch. Very impressed with it so far. I was able to overwite Ubuntu quite easily using the "manually configure block devices, filesystems and mountpoints" option and selecting ext4. I reinstalled GRUB to the MBR. Even Windows still works, but I suppose there's a downside to everything. Thanks again, everyone.

Glad to hear you got it working. If your issue is solved, please mark this thread as solved.