Comments on: Review: Zenwalk 5.2

By: It’s A Binary World 2.0 » Review: Zenwalk 6.0

It’s A Binary World 2.0 » Review: Zenwalk 6.0 — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 04:02:10 +0000

[...] Zenwalk 6.0 Back in Nov of 2008 I checked out Zenwalk 5.2 and a recent LXF contained Zenwalk 6.0 – so let’s see what has changed. It loads up with [...]

By: Eric Mesa

Eric Mesa — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 12:05:12 +0000

Thanks for your kind words. Glad I was able to review one of your favourite distros. As you said, it fills a great niche where it is easier to setup than Slackware, but not making all the decisions for you as is done in Ubuntu, Fedora, and Suse.

By: Gatton

Gatton — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 06:51:31 +0000

Thanks for writing a review of one of my fav distros. I actually haven’t used Zenwalk full time since mid 2008 but with the release of 5.4 beta I have reinstalled it. I really like it a lot. It has an excellent XFCE desktop which is my preferred DE.

I do recall not liking Netpkg very much but it is fine in 5.4. I don’t know if Netpkg has been updated or I just finally got used to how it works but I haven’t bothered reinstalling Zendo.

To me Zenwalk is a nice middle ground between the vanilla Slackware and something big and bloated like the “buntus. The beauty of Slackware is how you can make it whatever you want but Zenwalk takes care of a lot of things out of the box.

Take care.

By: Eric Mesa

Eric Mesa — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 22:54:32 +0000

You make some good points. I just think the updating/installing process should be a tad more intuitive.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 14:08:32 +0000

So I see nobody bothers to read manuals these days. While I found your article interesting and I do agree with you about netpkg being not intuitive, I still think that people put too much emphasis on this, as if they had nothing better to judge distros other than by comparing their package managers… For me, the important thing is how easy to set a distro up without much tinkering – i.e. you want to have a distro that starts and you do not need to do anything to your graphic settings and so on. As for packages, it is one of the packaging rule in Zenwalk that any Zenwalk package must work straight away without user doing any work. (This is one of the reasons why compiz is not included in the official repo.) If you are a student, fine… you can install arch, make your fantastic system, etc. etc. But if you are like me, not much time to play around with Linux (or even to distro hop), Zenwalk is doing pretty good in what it says it does.

By: furrito

furrito — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 03:32:46 +0000

I think once people got used to netpkg and saw how easy it was, that nobody bothered updating the HOW TO section of the wiki with that info. Sure, it’s there but not easy to find or understand. There’s little to no info suggesting Zendo as a package manager, either. Shame because so many users new to Zenwalk are given little guidance on how to use the great tools they have developed. I’m pretty lazy too, so I have little room to talk.

By: Eric Mesa

Eric Mesa — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 10:46:33 +0000

I think the best way to look at it is that Netpkg isn’t hard. It’s actually very easy. The best word to use would – unintuitive. If you’ve never used it before, it isn’t obvious what you should do.

By: Chuckie

Chuckie — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 04:47:19 +0000

Well, I never thought netpkg was difficult. Perhaps I used Vector 5.9 long enough while distro hopping that using the package manager with it helped when I moved to Zenwalk 5.2.

However, the one thing that bugs me, and still gets me once in a while, is the naming rules for the sources. Snapshot is for testing and Current is for tested programs that work. I still think it would be far better to have named snapshot beta (I think everyone by now knows what beta means, but even if they don’t, why not just call them “mightworkmightnot”) and the other could be “current” or “tested” or could even be “thesework”. I just have a hard time translating snapshot to “WARNING! Beta testing”.

By: Boycott Novell » Links 25/11/2008: More Mobile Devices Running GNU/Linux

Boycott Novell » Links 25/11/2008: More Mobile Devices Running GNU/Linux — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 11:08:51 +0000

[...] Review: Zenwalk 5.2 [...]

By: Eric Mesa

Eric Mesa — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 03:29:56 +0000

When I said Slackware was the original Ubuntu, I mean it was the first Linux that was easier to use and it’s what everyone used at the time. Other previous “Ubuntus” include Red Hat, Gentoo, and Mandriva.

By: Gigi

Gigi — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 09:11:03 +0000

Calling Slackware the original ubuntu would offend most Slackers…

Ease of use doesn’t mean point and click tools. It means “install and forget”. As Paul of absolute linux puts it, in most cases wiping the dust off the server is the only maintenance required.

Slackware doesn’t do dependency resolution but this is largely mitigated by the fact that in slackware most software are bundled as single tarballs unlike other distros which bundle the libraries, translations, artwork etc in separate packages (thus increasing the number of dependencies). I am not saying one way is better than the other but just that the slack way has worked for long enough so there are not enough reasons to consider changing it.

By: figment

figment — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 05:19:38 +0000

You seem to have found one of the biggest problems with Zenwalk everyone has been complaining about for some time now, and that’s Netpkg. Before it went to the 4.x version it actually was very intuitive and easy to use! Putting it in front of a new user of Linux or someone like yourself coming from another distro with easier to use package managers, it puts a very large stumbling block in front of you, possibly turning new users off using Zenwalk. Even for those of us that have used Zenwalk for a while now, find it difficult and very non-user-friendly! The developer has been unwilling to listen to suggestions though, so I’m afraid it won’t change.

Now you do have an alternative package manager to use, called Zendo. Created shortly after Netpkg 4.x came out, it strives to satisfy users, both experienced and new. You’ll have to move to a Snapshot mirror to install it with it’s dependencies, but I’m betting you’ll quickly start to like Zenwalk more after using it! Zenwalk is one of the best distros I’ve used in recent years! With ease of use, installation and package management, especially for dependencies in mind, you’ll be hard pressed to find another Linux distro as stable and reliable! Hope you hang around a bit as the new 5.4 is due out soon, promising to have lots of new things you’ll like!

By: Eric Mesa

Eric Mesa — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 03:21:18 +0000

Yes, I’ve been meaning to try Vector Linux for a while now. I’ve heard very good things about it and the name has always fascinated me. Whenever it appears in Linux Format Magazine, I will check it out. That’s what determins which distros I review.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 09:46:42 +0000

Will you try Vector and compare it ti Zenwalk ?