Some may call me a distromaniac but, hey, I know I can’t resist the urge to purge an old computer and violate a few processors with a new flavor of *nix. I’ve committed to them all in the past – Red Hat, Mandrake, FreeBSD, Debian, Knoppix, Mepis, Slackware, SUSE, and Ubuntu to name a few. But, like a swinger, I always cheated and ditched them for something else.
Recently I went into a distro binge and downloaded all the most popular ISO’s. I obsessed with Distrowatch.com and saw fit to track down any that looked suitable for my old clapped out PIII 633 machine. I tried all the mini’s and even tried some of the bigger kitchen sink variety distros.
I was wanting something lean mean and not too bad on the eye. When all the smoke had cleared and the hard drive was feeling a bit flaccid, I chose to enter a relationship with Zenwalk 5.0. I know, I shouldn’t commit, I should have learned my lesson but, I just couldn’t help it.
The install was fairly standard and painless, not really worth much of a mention. I’d recommend that you download the live version first and give the distro a good test run. The live version is true to the actual install. One bummer was a lack of install to HDD on the live version.
First off, I liked the philosophy of Zenwalk – simplicity. A single package per task or issue. Following this simplicity was an easy package manager – netpkg when I needed or wanted something not included in the original install. They’ve thrown in a nice netpkg gui but I find that the CLI is much quicker and facilitates my lazy streak. It also is built on off a slackware platform and I have always been fond of slack and it’s speed. Zenwalk’s new you beaut HAL makes plug-n-play a breeze which is important now-a-days.
As a photographer I was initiially disappointed when I plugged in a digital camera and nothing happened. I was hoping HAL would kick in and allow me to browse or download my photos. Alas, a quick “netpkg digiKAM” fixed up that problem pretty quick and so now I’m good to go with the camera.
My verdict after the honeymoon?? It runs a little slower than what I think it should. I was expecting a slack derivative to still look beautiful the morning after but she does have a few bags under the eyes. Nevertheless, I still like her. She’s stable, good looking and easy to maintain. All in all … I’m still turned on and haven’t strayed once!
Before running off, I should mention that the documentation, wiki, support and forums for Zenwalk are very good. I noticed on some of the distros that there was little tolerance or responses to questions in forums … not so with Zenwalk. Good documentation and good support makes me very happy.
Here’s my screen shot of Zenwalk 5.0 with Gimp and a terminal on the desktop. I’m running the standard Xfce with the bottom panel removed. I like the right click access to apps and it leaves more area on my small old fashioned monitor. The wallpaper is one of the standards in the /usr/share/wallpaper/ directory.
DISTROJUNKIES UNITE!
Are you a distromaniac too? Have you experienced binge distro installs? Feel free to take confessional here
DISTROJUNKIES UNITE!
Are you a distromaniac too? Have you experienced binge distro installs? Feel free to take confessional here
Cool how did you do that?
Cool how did you do that?
Really cool. I tried installing gphoto2 and derivatives with no luck. And the digiKAM came just it time
Really cool. I tried installing gphoto2 and derivatives with no luck. And the digiKAM came just it time
Strange … I installed gphoto2 with netpkg and it seems to be fine – at least from the command line. Although I didn’t grab the graphical front end.
Strange … I installed gphoto2 with netpkg and it seems to be fine – at least from the command line. Although I didn’t grab the graphical front end.
Juniper,
Do you mean how did I get the screenshot? For the one in the post I used the screenshot capability of the GIMP under File –> Aquire –> Screenshot. You could also netpkg zenshot which is a nifty little screenshot application.
Juniper,
Do you mean how did I get the screenshot? For the one in the post I used the screenshot capability of the GIMP under File –> Aquire –> Screenshot. You could also netpkg zenshot which is a nifty little screenshot application.
yes, i meant that, and who’s anydoby!?!?!
yes, i meant that, and who’s anydoby!?!?!
Zenwalk was a distro I loved, frolicking in the fields and giving it little shoulder massages on lazy afternoons, until v.4.41 where she kicked me right in the hard drive nomenclature and refused to answer calls. Now with the siren song of v5′s new shiny HAL I am drawn once more and have left Debian’s bags and apt-get on the front lawn. A folly of mine? Love unrequited? We shall see. We shall see…
Zenwalk was a distro I loved, frolicking in the fields and giving it little shoulder massages on lazy afternoons, until v.4.41 where she kicked me right in the hard drive nomenclature and refused to answer calls. Now with the siren song of v5′s new shiny HAL I am drawn once more and have left Debian’s bags and apt-get on the front lawn. A folly of mine? Love unrequited? We shall see. We shall see…
Poetry … pure poetry
Poetry … pure poetry
Makes me want to go distro hunting again. I’ve been with Suse way too long…
GrokCode’s last blog post..The Top 9
Makes me want to go distro hunting again. I’ve been with Suse way too long…
GrokCode’s last blog post..The Top 9
lol … I hung out with Suse for over a year and a half once too
Still like it but the simplicity of Zenwalk that has kept me happy.
lol … I hung out with Suse for over a year and a half once too
Still like it but the simplicity of Zenwalk that has kept me happy.
And now we’re on Zenwalk 5.2! I linked to your great design page in my so-called review. Cheers!
furrito’s last blog post..Feeling Zen Yet?
And now we’re on Zenwalk 5.2! I linked to your great design page in my so-called review. Cheers!
furrito’s last blog post..Feeling Zen Yet?
I have been using Zenwalk Linux for the past 2 years and I don’t regret. It is not perfect, well, almost perfect for me but it gives me a very simple and fast operating system. I have a Dell Inspiron 600m with a Pentium-M processor and this baby fly super fast. I have tried Fedora 10, Ubuntu, openSUSE, Mint, openSOLARIS and I would put Fedora 10 as my second choice.
I like your blog a lot! I never thought about using Zenwalk + GIMP to manage your pictures. I have an Apple G5 which my uses for the pictures. I use Zenwalk mainly to experiment with statistics and Python.
Good job….
-2501
2501’s last blog post..15 Real-Apps of Genetic Algotithms
I have been using Zenwalk Linux for the past 2 years and I don’t regret. It is not perfect, well, almost perfect for me but it gives me a very simple and fast operating system. I have a Dell Inspiron 600m with a Pentium-M processor and this baby fly super fast. I have tried Fedora 10, Ubuntu, openSUSE, Mint, openSOLARIS and I would put Fedora 10 as my second choice.
I like your blog a lot! I never thought about using Zenwalk + GIMP to manage your pictures. I have an Apple G5 which my uses for the pictures. I use Zenwalk mainly to experiment with statistics and Python.
Good job….
-2501
2501’s last blog post..15 Real-Apps of Genetic Algotithms