Review: Zenwalk 6.2 (Page 1 of 1)
Written by
SJR
Posted on: Jan 13, 2010 at 03:31pm
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I downloaded and installed the “Core” version of Zenwalk in October 2009 after a rough experience upgrading from Xubuntu 9.04 to 9.10 and have used it almost daily since then, mostly for web browsing and other light tasks. I wanted to stick with the XFCE environment, because I like it and it runs on an older rig. The host machine is a Shuttle small form factor (a “toaster” PC) running an Athlon 64 2800+ CPU, Nforce 3 250 chipset, 1GB RAM, Radeon 9550 AGP graphics, and a 160GB harddrive.
Zenwalk is a France-based distribution originally based on Slackware. It first appeared in 2004 under the name “Minislack”, and changed to the current name in 2005. The current stable version, 6.2, was released in September 2009. At Christmas 2009, Zenwalk was the 19th most popular distro tracked by distrowatch.com, with an average of 375 page views per day. (This placed the distro in roughly the same range as Kubuntu and Knoppix.)
Getting started was straightforward. The installer is polished and created a partition for Zenwalk alongside Xubuntu without any problems. The first boot went smoothly, and the layout of the desktop was straightforward and logical. By default, two desktops are created. Frequently used applications are docked in the center bottom of the screen. Zenwalk recognized the PC's Ethernet internet connection automatically.
Zenwalk is very responsive on my middle-aged PC. Bootup time from GRUB to a fully ready desktop is consistently around 35 seconds. Menus respond crisply, programs launch quickly and – with one significant exception discussed below – are very responsive. After a cold boot, with no other applications running, Zenwalk idles at an unbelievable 0.7-1.3% of CPU, with only 150MB of RAM used. Moving open windows around the desktop with compositing and eye candy enabled bumped CPU use to over 50%, but usage quickly dropped back to more normal levels.
The Zenwalk community make things easy for newcomers. Zenwalk has outstanding documentation. It's clear, covers useful topics concisely, and was very useful. The “getting started” manual is well done and available as a PDF download in 14 different languages. The website,
www.zenwalk.org, is well-organized and logical. There are localized sites in France, Hungary, Poland, Spain and Sweden – reflecting Zenwalk's strength in Europe. Like Zenwalk, the community forums on the main site are newbie-friendly. The Zenart Public Gallery on Picasa hosts an array of art for the distribution, most of it impressively professional.
Zenwalk comes with a comprehensive set of applications and utilities. Media apps include Brasero, the Exaile music player, and Totem. Thunar provides file management, and Open Office 3.1 is bundled for productivity, along with the Evince document viewer, GIMP, and the gThumb image viewer. The Internet suite is anchored by the Mozilla-based Iceweasel browser and Icedove email client, plus the usual utility suspects filed under the Accessories, Settings and System menus. Like other Linux flavors, if Zenwalk has a weakness out of the box it's in the handling of multimedia elements. There is a “restricted” repository, which is easily selectable from the package management application, for software which may be necessary but potentially tainted by intellectual property issues.
I found Zenwalk to generally be pleasant and efficient to use. The distro's default themes and wallpapers use light and bright colors, and there are a wide set of themes. The desktop is easy to customize and tweak, and the 3D options and compositing options are standard Linux fare. In a bow to new users, the distro also makes excellent use of mouse tooltips – concise descriptions of apps and menu choices are littered throughout the software and are accessed by letting the cursor hover over the icon or feature. Another useful addition that newcomers may appreciate is the Application Finder tool, which categorizes installed software by title and a brief but helpful description.
The default package management system is Netpkg. The basic interface is simple, and adding or removing software is easy. Netpkg will figure out dependencies and offer to install or delete them along with the actual application being changed. Updating is more involved, since Zenwalk is set up by default to use a “pull” system for updates and patches. The theory as explained on the website is that Zenwalk expects to be largely stable and should require few updates other than security patches. It is possible to change this so that the process is automatic and “pushed” out to the user.
The update process isn't hard, just a little tedious. I did my first update after running the system for a couple of months, dutifully screened the package versions on my local mirror against the versions installed on my system, waded through the results and manually marked the several dozen changes. The update process turned out to be extremely resource-intensive. CPU use hovered around 100% and multitasking ground to a halt. Subsequent updates have been much quicker, although Netpkg does like to eat CPU cycles and RAM. Obviously, your results may be different on a more powerful system, but I'd strongly suggest budgeting some time for regular, more incremental updates.
Updating isn't for the faint of heart, or short of RAM... Conclusions: This is hands-down one of the most user-friendly distributions I've tried. This long-term test drive had a few relatively minor bugs, and they were far outweighed by Zenwalk's overall friendliness and ease of use. The distro is bright and well-designed, and is backed by strong documentation and a newby-friendly community. In my installation it had a very high “just worked” factor, although obviously individual results may vary for other users and machines. If XFCE isn't your cup of tea, Zenwalk is also available in a GNOME version.
Another thing that just worked -- how does that keep happening?
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