“Zenwalk 3 is an operating system based on Patrick Volkerding’s Slackware GNU/Linux distribution, version 10.2. The entire operating system fits on a single CD, and stays true to what the author calls the ‘Zen philosophy’. This philosophy, as it has been coined, refers to Zenwalk’s policy of including one application per task. I’ve had a few problems with Slackware and Slackware-related systems in the past, but Zenwalk has alleviated all of my stress regarding those issues. Here’s why.”
my choice of Linux on not so recent hardware… 🙂 give it a try if you have not yet…
yes sir
Great on old and new hardware, netpkg is a great little tool, although I wish that there was lots more software to choose from. Being based on SlackWare was what got me to try this great little distro in the fisrt place, being a lonetime SlackWare user myself. On a scale of 1 to 10 (1 being the worst, 10 being the best), I’d rate ZenWalk Linux a solid 9.
And how would you rate KateOS? http://kateos.org/
1) Faster (all on NPTL) , more stable IMO
2) More software (You may add your packages on http://kateos.org/pkgportal/ )
3) Updateos is better than netpkg. (Dependencies in package, built time)
4) Pkg is faster then Installpkg, Removepkg becouse it is not script but C++ app. (installpkg is symlink to pkg -i, removepkg is symlink to pkg -r , etc)
5) “An interesting novelty is Update-notifier, a task bar applet designed for KateOS which automatically checks for available updates, and allows for easy package selection and update. It is based on the libupdateos library”
http://kateos.org/
On a scale of 1 to 10 (1 being the worst, 10 being the best), I’d rate KateOS a solid 11
i like how you joined the same day you commented… you with the kateOS project?
Is there a live CD of this?
Sure is:
http://www.zenwalk.org/modules/news/article.php?storyid=19
Okay, got my own answer and there is:
http://www.zenlive.tuxfamily.org/
It seems to be a trend in Linux world: offshots, forked or remastered distributions tends to be better than their origins ( source distros), whatever the word better should stand for.
You know what I mean : Ubuntu is better than Debian,
PSLinuxOS is bettern than Mandriva as PSBSD is better than FreeBSD (just to mention Unix ) etc.
And Zenwalk Linux is not an exception in that regards.
Although I really like Partick Wolkerding’s great dedication to Linux (I’ve just installed his Slackware 10.0 on Pentium I 166 MHz Intel 440VX board based PC where other most recent Linux distribution wont even boot) I’d rather install Zenwalk 3 on my machines than original Slackware 10.2. Or another Slackware based VectorLinux.
If I have to choose between purity, strictness and austerity of parental distributions ( Debian, RedHat, Slackware) and usability and utilitarianism found in child distributions ( Ubuntu, Xabdros, Fedora, PSLinuxOS, Zenwalk, Slax ) I would always go for latter ones.
It’s not that I like those eclectic bastards just because they’re breaking rules. I simply have a feeling that they all have more things to offer to modern computer users than their rigid parents .
It’s sort of like illegitimate child is more up to the challenge than its “big daddy” which is something I always liked in Linux.
And that’s where I see the core of what makes the progress going on not only in Linux and Open Source movement: infinite fighting with new calls.
If only parents could learn from their kids!
nedvis
Edited 2006-10-16 03:05
But, it’s that rigidity and lacking stuff you may find useful that makes the parents worth building from.
In many cases, the children are not better–you just read more about the better ones, and are clearly interested in a desktop. If I were to set up a small FW, I’d look into customized Linux distros (Smoothwall, IPCop), Slackware, and OpenBSD. Forget the pretty derivatives. All the added features can mean more time trying to get something that should have been simple to work. I’ve also had this experience with Ubuntu a few times with desktop stuff.
Sure, the parent distros could learn…but they don’t, and shouldn’t. If Slackware were to take up much of what makes Zenwalk good (I’ve not tried 3.0, but 2.4, 2.6, and 2.8 were nice), then Slackware wouldn’t be as good at what you might use it for as-is; and it wouldn’t be as good as a distro to build from, since one of the cool things going for it in both aspects is simplicity and flexibility through minimalism.
It’s not that I like those eclectic bastards just because they’re breaking rules. I simply have a feeling that they all have more things to offer to modern computer users than their rigid parents.
Hmm, and here I was thinking the opposite. That Debian is the more flexible universal distro, whereas Ubuntu is the more streamlined, defined and rigid desktop distro…
To me it seems more like the parent distro is often the general distro, and the daughter is derived and specialized – so if you need an os for a specific task, chances are that you will find the latter by default more tuned to your needs.
Debian->Knoppix->ClusterKnoppix->Quantian
Posted by korpenkraxar: Hmm, and here I was thinking the opposite. That Debian is the more flexible universal distro, whereas Ubuntu is the more streamlined, defined and rigid desktop distro…
Funny, my thoughts exactly. Take a thumbs-up… 😉
There is no “better than”, I don’t see anything better for example in DesktopBSD or PC BSD against FreeBSD. The latter is the best, but DesktopBSD/PCBSD offer some flavour to choose from. Easy/hard to maintain, better than …, all of these buzz-phrases are maybe right in “your” context but not in common.
> If only parents could learn from their kids!
Sometimes it is useful, sometimes it is crap.
Writing this from under ZenLive. It’s very fast – in fact, I can’t notice I’m working with a Live CD, apart from application startup times. Even Firefox flies on it! Boot process is fast, too. All partitions on your disks are mounted automatically. XFCE 4.3.99 is clean, powerful and beautiful, if a little awkward as far as panel configuration goes (panel has always been my pet peeve in variuos incarnations of XFCE). Basic development tools are included, which allowed me to compile eciadsl driver and connect to Internet.
Now to the weaknesses.
1) Major: This Live CD is not very suitable for work when your native keyboard layout is not Latin-based, since there is no GUI-based way to add more layouts. For example, I’m Russian, so I’d like to be able to type Cyrillic letters. By launching ZenLive’s Keyboardconfig tool, I can select Russian layout, but then I’m losing the English one – and therefore can’t even enter the password to restore English input! (I worked around this by copy-pasting text from Firefox.)
2) Minor: IMHO the native GUI tools for package management leave much to be desired. Slapt-get/gslapt combo would be friendlier.
3) Extremely minor: For using as a recovery CD, inclusion of Midnight Commander would be desirable.
One more major weakness: while ZenLive does mount NTFS volumes, it forgets to specify “nls=utf8” in mount options, therefore files and directories with localized names are not displayed, which is not good at all 🙁 Also, it would be nice to have a non-default option to enable writing on NTFS volumes using ntfs-3g – preferably using a friendly GUI.
One more nicety: the included version of GParted seems to have more capabilities than Ubuntu’s one, including creating and resizing NTFS partitions.
Unfortunately, Zenwalk is not a free-by-default GNU/Linux system. Luckily, this is easy to fix, as I am informed that the Java Runtime Environment, or JRE is the only non-free component of the system. As root, perform the following command in a terminal window:
removepkg jre
Done. Zenwalk is liberated.
Do people really think they’re respected because they say such things? Or is this one of these alter-online-egos, where it’s all touchy-feely and “hey guys look, I’m part of the movement”, but hopefully in real life doesn’t actually believe this drivel? Do people really not respect real freedom so much that they diminish it by saying things like “remove jre Done. Zenwalk is liberated”?
I’m not looking for respect. I believe in the philosophy. Don’t burn bridges just because you have matches.
I’m not looking for respect. I believe in the philosophy. Don’t burn bridges just because you have matches.
I simply wonder if this interpretation of “the philosophy” has any useful end. If one placed a user who had no knowlege of Java licensing in front of a Zen box with or without Java, would he be able to tell the difference between the “liberated” and “non-liberated” versions except when Java programs failed to execute? Would “cp” or “dd” feel different on the “liberated” box?
Having tried many different distros over the last fews, and having gotten fed up with so many of them being bloated and buggy, I’ve been wanting to try something more stable and efficient.
I’ve tried Slackware, and liked it a lot – clean, simple (in design), super stable, and efficient. However, even though the command line tools are easy and the config files are well commented/documented, a Slack system takes too much work to get up and running the the way I want.
Enter Slackware derivatives. If so many Debian derivatives can improve on Debian on features, installation, usability, etc, I figured “why not a Slack based distro”.
I’ve used Slax off and on for a year. IMHO, Slax is the best live CD next to Knoppix. However, it’s purely a live CD, and the usefullness of Live CDs only goes so far.
So finally I gave Zenwalk a try.
Great move.
Zenwalk is super fast (blazingly fast – faster than anything I’ve tried), much easier to install and configure than Slack (with fantastic HD detection), and a wonderful Xfce desktop (*nix DE’s is another big bugaboo for me – Gnome and KDE have gotten too bloated and buggy for me).
Adding packages is easy, too, with Netpkg, Gslapt, pkgtool, and going to Zenwalk repos, or Slack repos (it is based on Slack 10.2 afterall).
So Zenwalk is like a breath of fresh air – simple, clean, stable, polished, easy, and blazingly fast.
For now, I’m done with the likes of Ubuntu, Mandriva, Fedora, Mepis, etc – too much bloat, too many bugs, too many borked systems as a result of apt or yum or urpmi.
The Slack/Zen philosphy suits me very well.