Zenwalk 4.8 Review

Zenwalk (formerly Minislack), or Zenwalk Linux, is a Slackware-based GNU/Linux distribution with a goal of being slim and fast by using only one application per task and with focus on graphical desktop and multimedia usage. Zenwalk is currently ranked # 15 at Distrowatch.

Zenwalk comes in four different versions: Standard, Core, Live, and Server Editions. I used standard edition for this review. There is no screen capturing application installed by default by Zenwalk; thus the review does not contain any screen-shots from my machine. If you are interested in seeing Zenwalk, look here

Test Machine
Pentium D 3.4 GHz with 2 gig of RAM, Nvidia 7300GS with 256 meg RAM and 19" wide screen monitor.

Booting
For this review I chose the Standard Edition, and it does not come with a Live environment.

Installation
The installer is ncurses application, similar to Slackware. For some newbies this, seemingly text based installation method, can be intimidating. The installer asks the standard questions, root partition, swap partition etc. and begins installation.

Once installation is complete the user can configure the system. One of the most annoying fact about a Slackware based distribution is failure to load the required network card module. The installer detects the network card, allows the user to specify the network settings, and then on booting, the network functionality is missing. The user has to manually load the network driver module . Now this issue is generic to almost all Slackware derivatives.

So if you are planning to install Zenwalk, or as matter of fact any Slackware derivative, its better to know your network card name and corresponding module required by Linux before hand. A simple googling will help :). On my machines, I have intel network and realtek network cards and the modules are e100 and 8139too, respectively. So for the intel based driver I have to issue "modprobe e100" as root user. Once the module is loaded, the user has to bring up the network card by going through a control center application called ZenPanel.

Aesthetics
Zenwalk flaunts the most simple and elegant theme; its nice and cool. Zenwalk has xfce as the default desktop manager. And the xfce is left in its original format, not pushed hard to look like gnome, as done by some other distributions like Xubuntu and Mint.

Zenwalk has a really nice login screen; very well integrated with the splash screen and wallpaper. But with this version (4.8), somehow the themed login screen was not selected by default. I had to manually set in Settings Manager.

Applications
Zenwalk has a unique application strategy: one mainstream application for each task. Its nice and can be very helpful for new Linux converts. A lot of confusion is cleared. I used Geany, as a text editor, for the first time and was really impressed.

Almost all the applications are in the latest version. Ice weasel (re-branded Firefox) is 2.0.0.6-g2. Open office is missing from the packages, instead Abiword and Gnumeric Spreadsheets are installed. Although these applications are enough for an average desktop user, but I feel that Open Office would have been a better option. Maybe we can hope to see that in later versions.

With xfce based distributions one serious short-coming is the lack to samba viewer. There is no way to view samba shares on other machines. And the same scenario is there for Zenwalk.

Multimedia
Zenwalk has the complete multimedia support out-of-box. It was able to view/listen all kind to medis formats without any glitch.

Eye Candy
There is no advanced compositing manager installed by default with Zenwalk. A default compositing manager is installed which allows true window transparency.

Recommendations
Kindly load the desired network module during boot: its easy and simple, but can prove to be really annoying to a new user. Also Open Office is much better and complete solution for office related application; kindly consider it for inclusion.

Conclusion
I am just in love with xfce based distributions; they are fast, simple and elegant and Zenwalk is no exception. It has a really good control center and out-of-box multimedia support. Except for few initial hick-ups (network card module) it is really user friendly. I would recommend it to new Linux users.

Linux Mint 3.0 Xfce Review

Linux Mint is an Ubuntu-based distribution whose goal is to provide a more complete out-of-the-box experience by including browser plugins, media codecs, support for DVD playback, Java and other components. It is compatible with Ubuntu software repositories. The 3.0 Xfce edition was released on August 7, 2007. Some snapshots for Linux Mint can be found here, but these snapshots are not specific for Xfce.

Test Machine
The test machine that I am using is pretty old and well suited for lightweight distributions like this. It is an AMD Athlon 2600+ XP, 1 Gig RAM, 64 Meg ATI 7200 with 15" LCD capable of 1024x768@75Hz

Booting
On the boot screen, user is given three choices. Default one is to open a live session with Linux Mint Xfce. The booting takes a little time as it configures all the hardware. It correctly identified the screen resolution of 1024x768@75Hz. The system seems similar to the gnome version.

Installation
The installation is the same seven step installation used by Ubuntu. It asks you about the language, time zone and key board. The worst part is the hard disk partitioning.

The partitioner takes too much time to identify all the partitions. Then whenever user changes something, it requires to rescan the whole partition table again. Why does one need to rescan the whole partition table with every single edit; this could be done at once when the user selects to write the changed partition table to disk. Anyway this rant should not be applicable to Mint as they are using the standard *buntu installer.

Then it provides you with an option to migrate your user settings from any existing operating system. It shows you the final configuration and you can go ahead with the installation. The installation was relatively fast; it took approximately 10 minutes to finish.

Aesthetics
Now this is one of the most awful aspect of *buntu family. Three years in making and nobody could ever come up with a good grub menu. Why are users offered an outdated black & white boot loader with no image. Some distributions have advanced to gfxgrub, but if that seems a huge effort then at least provide a nice image for the grub. Again this rant is not something specific to Mint.

A lot of times, I see people referring to Xfce as "tasteless mimicking of Gnome". This is because distributions like Xubuntu and Linux Mint Xfce actually make them believe that. Come on, Xfce has its own identity, there is no difference in desktop context menu and start menu. Distributions like Zenwalk and Vector actually keep the original Xfce feel and look great.

Linux Mint shares the wallpaper and icons across all the versions; Gnome, KDE and Xfce. Other editions of Mint include specialized launchers, and I was expecting something on similar terms for Xfce edition, but there was none.

Applications
I feel that the set of applications included is very limited as compared to other Xfce based distributions. User gets standard accessories with catfish, mousepad, thunar and tomboy notes. For graphics you have gimp. For Multimedia you have mplayer, xfmedia, gnormalize, exaile, brasero. Internet applications contain, Firefox, Thunderbird, Pidgin, Java 6, Deluge. For office, you have open office.

User gets a lot of configuration options via system settings. Linux Mint XFce edition also has its own control center. XServer-Xorg application really requires an applause, it is a really nice front end for editing xorg.conf and its does its work very well. One key application missing is the one for taking screenshots. I was unable to find any pre-installed screenshot application and thus this review lacks screenshots :(

On the plus point all the Ubuntu repositories are compatible with Mint and thus you can install any application you want from the repositories.

Fortune is installed by default and displays humorous quotes every time you open a terminal. Fortune cookies are great fun, but not many distributions include them by default (the only other distribution which I know is Slackware)

Multimedia
As part of Mint mission statement, it is supposed to provide better out of box experience to the user and it does the same to some extent. I was able to play windows media file, MP3 file and DVDs. Flash was also enabled for web surfing. Only missing point was that my sound card was not configured properly.

Eye Candy
Beryl is installed, which you can easily configure. For me the default driver loaded was ati and not radeon and thus I had initial problems with beryl. Once the driver was changed to radeon beryl worked great. Beryl came up with default red window borders which was inconsistent with the generic green theme.

Recommendations
Linux Mint Xfce requires some polishing, and in doing so it should stop mimicking gnome. It also requires lot more applications out of the box.

Conclusion
Linux Mint is a good distribution but I was really disappointed by the Xfce edition. There are a lot other Xfce based distributions which are far more superior to Mint. I would like to just wait and see Linux Mint Xfce edition getting polished.