Submitted by The official release of Zenwalk 6.0, based off of Slackware, was recently posted at the Zenwalk website, detailing the vastest of all changelogs in the entire history of the project including an upgrade to the latest and greatest Xfce release and an updated kernel.Of the most notable features, the new version includes Xfce 4.6, which the developers spent the previous two months working around and integrating into the system for a seamless, smooth experience. Also, Gnome Office was dropped for a new, optimized Openoffice 3.0.1, which is a lightweight version that was tailored to fit Zenwalk. It’s actually split into two different packages; the default package includes Writer, Calc, Impress, and Draw, and the additional package, downloadable via Zenwalk’s package manager, brings Math, Database, and Java support. The system’s movie player, Mplayer, was also replaced with a new application called Totem.
Hyperion (also known as Jean-Philippe Guillemin) summarizes the most important changes in the OS:
– Kernel 2.6.28.7 with gspca, which supports many more webcams
– Wicd becomes the main network configuration tool
– New Zenpanel with integrated Disk Manager, Wifi and Wired Network Manager
– Gksu keyring based desktop granting system
– Faster boot (tuned init scripts, with realtime I/O scheduler)
– PAM authentication has been added to the system
– Improved suspend/hibernate, with XFCE Power Manager
– new Netpkg with orphan dependencies and “offline operation” support
– The powerful Exaile juke-box stream player has been added
– New artwork
– A simplified installer
The install supposedly takes about twenty minutes on modern hardware, but it should install and run well enough on anything equivalent or better than a system with a Pentium III processor and 128 MB of RAM, which are the minimum requirements. 256 MB or more RAM is recommended for the best experience.
Zenwalk 6.0 can be downloaded in either the Standard Edition, the Core Edition, or the Live Edition.
The first time I used ZenWalk was (I believe) when its 4.0 version came out (late 2006). It was the first time I’d really used XFCE (before that I had used fluxbox extensively). I was impressed by the use of XFCE and migrated most of my systems from fluxbox. The folks at ZenWalk have done a great job making the UI clean, minimal, and crisp.
While ZenWalk 6 touts XFCE 4.6, much under the hood hasn’t changed in very disappointing ways.
The included kernel and all applications are still only available in 32-bit variety. While not really a problem, when 8GB of RAM is << $100 USD I expect 64-bit support. CPU performance doesn’t really suffer, but it’d be nice to take advantage of modern hardware.
The installer leaves much to be desired; the framebuffer and text interface lacks a progress bar, does not allow for formatting disks with the less-recent-than-XFCE-4.6 ext4, and demands you install the archaic (and I thought dead) LILO. You do not get to control what packages are installed.
Once in graphical mode, ZenWalk 6 is true to their legacy of beautiful graphics and clean design. The menu system is well sorted and uncluttered, the fonts look good, but the mish-mash of software gives the system an unpolished and divided feel to it, but this is by no means unique to ZenWalk. To their credit they’ve stuck to GPLed software, with the (only?) exception being Adobe flash.
All in all, if you really want a XFCE based Linux distribution on your modern hardware, go with Xubuntu or the Fedora XFCE spin. If you’re sporting an Athlon XP, Pentium 4, or other legacy hardware, ZenWalk might be a better fit for you, especially if you want a taste of Slackware.
Ha ha ha, very funny.
Seriously, if you don’t like XFCE and prefer GNOME but you still want to have XFCE installed and tuned to feel and act like GNOME, install Xubuntu.
Why is it funny?
Excellent news. Zenwalk is great for my preferred hardware (i.e. old PCs rescued from work).
It continues the Slackware KISS principle with just enough automation to make staying up to date easy.
It’s a shame that it doesn’t work with VirtualBox.
There is a problem with the vesa driver and I’ve read that installing the guest additions can fix the problem, but that doesn’t work either. Guess the latest kernel version isn’t supported.
Edited 2009-03-11 11:31 UTC
Well…I must say that this the best Zenwalk release so far. I can tell right away that this baby runs a lot faaaaaaaastttttter than Fedora, Ubuntu or any other distro on my laptop.
There are several things that can be improved and they have been mentioned already in the Zenwalk forums.
XFCE works beautifully as always.
Fedora, Ubuntu, OpenSUSE are awesome distros too but are a heavier for me. If you are looking for something lighter, this is the one.
But overall, it is the fastest distro so far, boot up time takes about 20 seconds ony laptop instead of 45 sec, it is simple and snappier.
Honestly, for me, the best linux distro at this moment.
nt
http://stoplinux.org.ru/static/zenwalk_6_review.html
Hey, dude, let it all out. It’s not a shame to be afraid sometimes.
stoplinux? HahaHaha. Congratulations on being just as incredibly lame as all the Windows-hating sites.
I’m not sure if it was google translate, but I found the article amusing.
Hi,
I’ve been using OpenSuse, because it worked with most HW out-of-the box, but Zenwalk works even better (and faster)!
Here is the new winner!
Install: works out of the box!
Web cam: works out of the box!
WLAN: works out of the box!
LAN: works out of the box!
Card reader: needs tinkering (look for wiki articles on Aspire One)