thelinuxlink.net

Just installed the newly released Zenwalk 4, and I must say I LIKEY VERY MUCH.

One of the improvements is the softening of the font displays, looks more like the newer Windows fonts. I really think that this will be better on my eyes. The new netpkg 3.2 seems to just have bugfixes from their 3.0 version. Either way, I like it better than synaptic on Ubuntu because removepkg is completely detached from the netpkg dependencies, so if I want to uninstall something critical, I don't have to uninstall the entire distribution. Speed is definitely among its top priorities, and xfce seems very stable compared to some of the earlier releases. Its compatibility with Slackware is still going strong, and I think this is the primary reason why I'm using Zenwalk. I wanted a more desktop-friendly Slackware. Speaking of which, Zenwalk is capable of playing all media out of the box. That is something that the friendlier "free" distros have been unable to do.

One caveat: upgrading to 4.0 from 3.0 was not painless. By using netpkg to update the system to 4.0, it broke a whole bunch of key functions, bricking the system. Only a complete clean reinstall of 4.0 was able to bring the system back online. The release announcement recommends that a clean install be used by more "casual" users. I think I've been put in my place.

This past weekend I decided to take a look at what is going on over at Zenwalk. Downloaded Zenlive, then later Zenwalk itself.

I have to say, I'm impressed with this distribution so far. I've got it running on an older laptop of mine. Going to put it through it's paces over the next couple months. Going to do a few updates and upgrades, stuff like that, and see if it remains stable.

It certainly is "snappy" and I like what the developers have done with its package manager (netpkg) and the GUI configuration tools. Installation was really easy, too, especially when you consider that it is Slackware underneath.

Mandriva corporate sever? Ubuntu server? CentOS?

I've tried installing and configuring them all. None of these can compare to the simplicity or ease of Zenserver.

I wanted to try Zenserver on a PII test box of mine and I expected to be spending at least my Saturday installing and configuring the system to the way I want it.

Boy, was I wrong. Took me just over a half hour to install, upgrade and get running. Then I wanted to install EGroupWare. Easiest install of EGroupWare I ever experienced. Took a half hour to download, unpack and configure.

I'm really impressed.

Zenworks looks like a great distro, I've only heard one negative comment about Zenwalk 4, since a few people have had trouble upgrading from Zenwalk 3. Of course, I can't even think of a distro off-hand—or any other OS for that matter—that doesn't have this same problem. I've not had many problems upgrading, but I'm only accustomed to the rolling upgrades of Gentoo and only upgraded from Dapper to Edgy with no problems.