The Sabayon development team has announced the release of version 9 of its Linux distribution. Sabayon 9 is based on the 3.4 Linux kernel and is available in one of three "tier-1 flavour" editions, each providing a different default desktop environment – these are GNOME 3.2.3, KDE SC 4.8.3 and Xfce 4.10.

The developers say that much of their effort over the past three months since the previous release has been put into making the base system packages more secure. This has been done by introducing the Hardened Gentoo profile – Sabayon is derived from Gentoo Linux. The hardened profile adds several additional security services and enables various risk-mitigating options in the toolchain. However, the developers note that a hardened Linux kernel is not yet included, but that it "might come in the near future".



The new Rigo Application Browser in Sabayon 9

Source: Sabayon The release also introduces a new application browser called "Rigo", replacing the previous Entropy user interface known as "Sulfur". The developers describe the new UI as "a search-based, modern, modular and scalable application for browsing Sabayon packages", and welcome feedback from users so that they can improve it in future updates.

Another notable feature is the addition of support for ZFS filesystem technology preview support. However, the developers say that, due to licensing conflicts between the CDDL and GPL, they were "not allowed to provide a truly (including the Installer part) out-of-the-box support," adding that "but still, if you're interested in trying out an amazing filesystem like ZFS is, it's going to be straightforward after install." Other changes include using a PAE (Physical Address Extensions) enabled kernel for the 32-bit x86 version of Sabayon and upgrading the LibreOffice productivity suite to version 3.5.3.

More details about this release, including a full list of features, can be found in the official release announcement. Sabayon 9 is available to download for 32- and 64-bit systems from the project's mirrors.

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(crve)