The holidays are upon us and many are running around trying to get loved ones shiny boxes to open Christmas morning. Oftentimes, Linux users get a cute plush penguin or a cool book. But sometimes surprises come from the most unexpected places.

This is what will happen this year, only now it's no longer a surprise. Despite being guilty of letting the cat out of the bag, Sabayon is planning a Christmastime Gaming Edition release. Fabio Erculiani, Sabayon founder and lead developer, said, "We can show the world that Linux is a valuable, performant Gaming platform." This is sure to include a long menu of popular games native for Linux and demonstration versions for several commercial offerings.

Although no list was given at this time, one might speculate based on last year's gaming release. Last year the gaming release featured the GNOME desktop and came with games such as Battle of Wesnoth, Foobillard, Freeciv, Frozen Bubble, GNOME Games, NeverBall, Nexuiz, OpenArena, Pingus, Pychess, Scorched 3D, Spring, Stepmania, Torcs, Tremulous, Warsow, Warzone 2100, and Wormux.

Other gaming Linux distributions include Supergamer Supreme, whose last stable release was in July 2009. A test release for a newer version was made available for internal testing in July of this year, but the final wasn't announced. Ultimate Edition is another choice. Based on Ubuntu, their last release was on October 19, 2010. 2.8 Lite was released December 7, which is designed for those with lower system resources. Another gamer distro is linuX-gamers Live DVD. This one is only a live DVD with a heavy concentration on online multiplayer games. Its latest release was last June. Puppy Arcade is a light-weight distribution based on Turbopup Xtreme that includes emulators for systems such as Amiga, Atari, Commodore 64, GameBoys, Genesis, MS DOS, and SNES.

So, be sure to hit the hay early Christmas Eve so Santa can leave your shiny new Gaming Edition under your keyboard.