Hello, I just installed sabayon linux onto my desktop computer (x86_64 version). My computer is made up of the following parts:
Intel E6300 CPU (at 2.5GHz) with Zalman 9500 CPU cooler
Asus P5K - V motherboard
Corsair 2 x 1GB 667Mhz 4-4-4-12 RAM XFX 8600GT XXX Edition
Seagate 320 GB Hard Drive (SATA) (Has XP on it) WD 320GB Hard Drive (IDE) (has sabayon on it) LGSuper Multi DVD Drive with Light scribe
Antec Earth watts 430 Watt PSU
My first problem is that I can't get the cube feature to work in sabayon. I have it enabled... but when i use the keys to activate it I only get a line up of the different desktops I have open... how can I fix that?
Also I have xp on one hard drive and sabayon on the other.... i cant get them to see eachother... and to boot a different one i have to go into the bios and change the master hard drive .... is there anything I can do so that when i turn on the computer I get a choice of XP or sabayon?
The cube.. Sabayon have dropped the AIGLX drivers by default (that's my understanding of the situation a while ago) something to do with nvidia drivers ?. There is stuff on their website about installing the drivers and tinkering with compiz.. Don't have the graphics power to even load.. and that cube thing gets old real quick. The power it takes would be better used for doing stuff. http://www.sabayonlinux.org/forum/viewforum.php?f=53
The boot problems.. I think sabayon uses grub. Somewhere there will be a grub/menu.list file which you can edit accordingly. Funny it didn't detect windows while installing. http://forums.pcworld.co.nz/showthread.php?p=614804
Root around the gentoo documentation and sabayon forums for more in depth.
Jan is right, the cube feature does get real old real quick. Turn it all off, and maybe just enable switching with the mousewheel. I think 'ccsm' or 'compiz-config' or something is used to configure it all through a pretty self explanatory GUI. To be honest, the bling just becomes down right annoying unless it is very subtle AND useful. Mousewheel desktop switching (on the desktop itself, not just in the panel) is about all I found any use for at all, and wasn't really worth all the overhead in itself, so I just live without it altogether. That said, I think the project is doing a great job of bringing Windows users over and using Linux long enough to at least get a taste of what Linux can do for you, so don't think I'm bagging it.
Grub configuration is pretty easy, there is a really generic block of code (probably even already there, just commented out of your existing menu.lst! Not sure about Sabayon, but most should.). Change the (hd0,1) to suit.
#-----
title Winblows
rootnoverify (hd0,1)
makeactive
chainloader +1
#-----
ok i got the cube and extra features to work (im an idiot..)
but for the boot part... I installed linux when the hard drive containing windows was un plugged. (i had very important files i didnt want to risk loosing)
so im guessing that there are now 2 bootloaders... and i dont know how to fix that.
Nope, the chainloader part should still work just fine. What it is basically doing is passing control to Windows, so Windows itself isn't wise to anything going on with Grub.
Only problems *might* arise if the same drive controller was used (so they were both installed on the one SATA port or IDE master if you catch me), there are some Grub commands (map) to pull the wool over Windows eyes there and let Windows think it is still in the same physical location if that has changed, but chances are it won't matter it too much and you can just forge ahead anyway. Otherwise, you can probably put the Windows drive back in the original position, and change the boot order in the BIOS to still boot from the Linux drive. EDIT: Seeing as Windows doesn't mind being booted when you change boot order, the above shouldn't be required.
BACK UP YOUR DATA if you haven't already, and get in there and have a play around! Don't be afraid of making mistakes, that is how you learn the best, and if you make one, try to learn out to get yourself out of trouble, it won't be the last time you make one, that I can promise you. Grub is incredibly powerful and flexible, understanding it and partitioning will get you a long way towards really knowing Linux.
