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Why is this 'zen' distro so attractive ? It is as light as an air ballon. Zenwalk's isos files are also light to download. Well,Zenwalk is also light on the number of accompanying apps, a result of its one application for one task philosophy.
Zenwalk 4.2 was so suitable for my old Dell pentiumIII desktops and workstations and semi-modern low-specs notebook. I was very skeptical at first but after 1 month of using, i just love it. The other very popular distros, or mega distros have more affinity for power & ram. I am not a power user. I know i can opt for Vectorlinux 5.8 or even the Damn Small linux but after trying them, i still prefer the marriage of 'zen' computing and the virtue of Slackware. No kidding! I suppose you'll only know it, after you have walked the 'zen' path.Unfortunately, enlightenment is not guaranteed . But don't take your low-powered or old pc for granted. Zenwalk 4.4.1 was released on 24 feb 2006, 2 days after the release of version 4.4 which had acquired an xorg bug. Zenwalk 4.4.1 comes with Linux kernel 2.6.20. This new kernel introduced Zenwalk a new libata subsystem that will cause confusion in those users who have been used to the current device naming system of hdx and sdx. But I hope not ! Boot screen.
The brief notice of the new naming system could be seen on the boot screen of Zenwalk 4.4.1. Pata/ide and sata drives would be assigned with sdx and any optical drive would be assigned with srx. Honestly,I haven't come across such a subsystem that require such unnecessary change. Maybe, it has been 'abstracted' in other distros. For your information, this subsystem had existed since linux kernel 2.6.19. I hope, the great Mr.Linus Torvolds has some 'zen' reasons to implement such a change. I wouldn't be surprised if the existing Zenwalk users(especially those with pata coexisting with sata drive) decide to postpone this 'scary' kernel upgrade. There is a wiki to guide you, should you need an upgrade. When creating a website for making sales, one should look to employ ecommerce hosting. This is very useful to handle the shopping cart and handle transactions. Also one should look out for colocation hosting as there are chances for securing it better. Look for a company which hires cisco professionals who have certifications in courses like 220-301. With the help of coldfusion this site can be easily developed. And once uploaded it is essential to maintain the site at regular intervals. For this install a wireless adapter to access the wireless internet from anywhere, as it provides a lot of convenience. The marketing should be carried out directly, as it is most effective. The use of business voip phone will prove to be the cheapest in this case. For this review i used my Dell Inspiron 600m notebook pentium M 1.4 GHz with 1Ggb Ram & ati radeon graphic card. Again, i intentionally reduced the ram to 256mb to create the same decompensating level which existed when i reviewed Zenwalk 4.2 a few months ago. In this review, i will also share my experience with you. You see, I was in dilemma on whether to upgrade my pcs and notebook from Zenwalk 4.2 to Zenwalk 4.4.1 or just convert to Xubuntu6.10, when Zenwalk 4.4.1 was released a month ago. About sixteen seconds after i booted the default kernel boot option of Zenwalk 4.4.1, the same screen of the Zenwalk Setup x-window interface appeared. Cfdisk was still the partitioning tool of choice. I hope it will be replaced by gparted in the future version. Gparted can resize ntfs partitions. An indispensable tool for win xp users who need to reduce the size of the ntfs partition, in order to make room for linux. The Setup Menu.
After i executed the first few setup options, i reached the install option. It took 14 minutes to install. Then configure option was automatically presented to me. Everything was okay during the configuration until it failed to install lilo the bootloader. In order to solve the problem the easy way, i re-run the configure option of the Zenwalk setup screen. Instead of installing lilo the simple way, i chose expert style, but to no avail. In the end, i had to do it the hard way. The hard way to rescue my lilo; i exited from the setup screen via the Exit option. As result my notebook was made to re-boot, & the Zenwalk 4.4.1 CD was re-loaded again. This time, at boot prompt , i executed this line :- sata root=/dev/sda3 noinitrd rw. As a result, the freshly installed Zenwalk 4.4.1 was loaded, and after entering the xfce desktop, i used geany to repair the lilo.conf file. On the brighter side, i didn't experience problem in the installation of lilo on my Dell desktops/workstations. Also no problem on my low-spec notebook. Btw, the bootsplash was still the same. After logged in at the login manager the xfce start-up splash started. The start-up splash showed air ballons flying over thick clouds on a gloomy sky. Why the gloomy element in the xfce splash ? In Zenwalk 4.2, the xfce splash was an image of a dolphin in a diving posture on a background of energetic, multi-coloured sky. In my opinion, the older splash is better especially when fengshui is taken into consideration. Below is the desktop of zenwalk 4.4.1. The desktop look different from the one in version 4.2 but still maintain a simple and inviting look. The Xubuntu desktop looked too simple when i tried installed it earlier.
Other than the different wallpapers, i also noticed a small difference in the System submenu. Otherwise the menus system, desktop panel, and desktop icons are still very similar with those in Zenwalk 4.2. Below is the System submenu of Zenwalk 4.4.1. The new item that attracted my attention was the Zenwalk manual which was not available in Zenwalk 4.2.
As far as configuration tools are concerned, i was disappointed to realize that Zenpanel is nowhere to be found on the desktop or on the desktop panel. Zenpanel is supposed to be the mainstay of Zenwalk's system configuration's intuitiveness. Just imagine, it's found at the System submenu. Speaking of intuitiveness, the only improvement that i noticed was that of the network setting tool in Zenpanel. People should learn from Nokia. The Zenpanel.
While still in the zenpanel which made its debut in Zenwalk 4.2, i launched netpkg tool to see how many official repositories were available for Zenwalk 4.4.1. Fiy, Zenwalk and Slackware use tgz package format. With Zenwalk, you're not 'stuck' with xfce4.4, as kde and gnome are also available on the repository. You can also get fluxbox easily if this modified xfce 4.4 is still clunky and slow to you from the repositories. By the way, about 99% of the packages for Slackware can also be installed into Zenwalk. Although you can use gslapt or slapt-get to install packages from the repositories, the recommended one is still the netpkg or xnetpkg tools. Gslapt or slapt-get lack dependencies checking. Below is the Zenwalk 4.4.1 official repositories. There are more repositories nowadays as compared with the number that existed when Zenwalk 4.2 made it to the world. The number of packages you can install from the repositories are definitely not as much as the ones for debian/ubuntu but i think it's enough for simple and modern computing.
Application-wise, the apps that were bundled with Zenw4.2 were also available on Zenwalk 4.4.1. I didn't notice any extra new apps in Zenwalk 4.1.1. For those who hasn't tried Zenwalk 4.4.1, the mplayer that come with Zenwalk 4.4.1 could play google videos, avi video, wmv video, & mpeg video out-of-the-box. Cool ! However, you need to play quicktime video using firefox's mplayer plugin. Audacious played mp3 songs out-of-the-box. I could also play my original dvd movie with mplayer. Other than those multimedia applications, Firefox, gaim, gftp, thunderbird, abiword, gnumeric, thunar file manager, etc are also available. Like its predecessor, Zenwalk 4.4.1 lacks a flash-player. Not a big deal, as you can just download the flashplayer 9 tar ball from the Macromedia's website or install it from the Zenwalk's official repositories. These days the usbkeys are so cheap ! As a result, many people are carrying it everywhere. When i was young, i used alot of the 5.xx inch floppy disk. I noted that it took 2 mouse clicks to access my automounted usbkey's content, That is not friendly. Again, one may learn from Nokia. Another important usb device that deserve mentioning here is my HP officejet 4355 that worked out-of-the-box. Zenwalk 4.4.1 recognized all the resolution of my lcd and also crt monitors ! No sound problems too. This is how usbkey and DVDs are handled.
As for my ipw2100 wifi adapter, i needed to download the firmware from here first, then only unpacked it into /lib/firmware subdirectory. This is where Zenwalk lost to Xubuntu 6.10. Wifi-radar is provided for you to configure your wifi needs. Btw, ndiswrapper is also included in Zenwalk 4.4.1. Honestly, I never had luck with wifi radar whenever i attempted to use the WPA-PSK encryption protocol. I would be very ecstatic if the developers Zenwalk decide to replace wifi-radar with networkmanager. I suppose this is the best time for me to voice out this request as GCC4.1.2 and glibc2.5 for Slackware will be out soon. WiFi Radar.
In order to use WPA-PSK, below are the things that you may need to do from CLI :- i) Insert this line into /etc/modprobe.conf file :- alias eth1 ipw2100
ii) Create /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf file and then insert this block of codes :- ctrl_interface=/var/run/wpa_supplicant network={ ssid="your_ssid_here" proto=WPA key_mgmt=WPA-PSK psk="your_passphrase_here" } iii) execute wpa_supplicant -B -Dwext -ieth1 -c/etc/wpa_supplicant.conf iv) execute dhcpcd -d -t 20 eth1 The access point that i used in this case was a U.S Robotics Wireless MAXg Router which is also WPA2 capable. To wrap up this review, i hope that the decision on whether to install Zenwalk 4.4.1 or not, wouldn't be as difficult as what Lana Lang of Smallville had to make in episode 16 of season 6. In my opinion, as i didn't find anything truly special about Zenwalk 4.4.1 over 4.2 (plus the worry of the new subsytem), i would suggest an update of your current Zenwalk 4.2 packages but leave the kernel alone first. Backup first ! Me, i am going for a fresh install of Zenwalk 4.4.1 on all my machines running on Zenwalk 4.2. No special scripts in my pcs running Zenwalk 4.2. No mixture of storage devices in my system running Zenwalk 4.2. So, no worry ! Actually, i keep my data in usb hard disk. It's safer and convenient. If you happen to have problem in choosing between Zenwalk and its counterpart, Xubuntu, this is my rationale. Quite simple actually, if you need a mid-sized distro tuned for low-spec pcs or old pcs ( with out-of-the-box multimedia capability), choose Zenwalk. On the other hand, if you need mid-sized distro tuned for low-spec pcs or old pcs (with good wifi support), look nowhere else, pick Xubuntu. Lastly, a 'micro' case study of one of the pcs & notebooks that were involved in the upgrade from Zenwalk 4.2 to 4.4.1. Evidently, it wasn't difficult for me to decide on whether to perform a fresh install of new version or not. The target was my 6-month old low-spec Acer notebook that was happily running Zenwalk 4.2. The Acer notebook came windows & Linpus linux when i bought it. Life was difficult with the damn slow window xp. Xubuntu 6.10 did help because it wasn't fast enough. So, I opted for Zenwalk 4.2 then. Now i want Zenwalk 4.4.1 to rejuvenate my Acer notebook. Well, i did try Vector linux 5.8 or even Sam linux 2007 on it and they are also good choices, with such a low-specs, but they are just not my flavours. Zenwalk 4.2 and 4.4.1 flies on my Acer notebook with only 256mb ddr ram. Since i used my Acer notebook only for internet banking, i am not yearning for the great wifi support by Xubuntu 6.10 for the Atheros adapter that came with my notebook. Cross the threshold with Vector linux 5.8, Damn Small linux, puppy linux, or even SAM linux 2007. Thank you for reading my review. By Michael Shee Choon Beng. (
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