ZenWalk — I'm tempted
I haven't tried ZenWalk in a very long time, but I'm thinking about it.
When I first started using Linux, ZenWalk was one of the first systems I played around with. I had a nice install at one point, and that particular machine would install the old version of ZenWalk at the time but not whatever the new version happened to be. As a last-ditch effort/experiment, I tried to upgrade the old system, but since ZenWalk pretty much stopped supporting my old system but kept everything in the same repository, the upgrade pretty much bricked the install.
Still, ZenWalk is a super-fast system with excellent hardware detection and less geeky pain than in Slackware, upon which Zenwalk is based.
Then there was/is the controversy about whether or not ZenWalk was complying with the GPL when it didn't make source code available. (I can't find a good item to link to, but the issue was discussed hotly and at extreme length in the LXer forums.)
But with every new ZenWalk release, including the current beta of version 5.4, I'm tempted to give ZenWalk another try.
I have old hardware, love fast systems, love the default Xfce desktop environment (which is right there in Slackware but somewhat of a red-headed stepchild to KDE), love the look of ZenWalk and appreciate its very extensive repository.
When it comes to Slackware-for-the-rest-of-us distros, I've been more than partial to Wolvix, even though I worry about it's relative speed (I get the feeling it's slower than ZenWalk, Vector and plain ol' Slackware, though I have not much to back this feeling up), I worry about whether or not I've updated the kernel properly (it requires some hackery in slapt-get and/or Gslapt that I'm a bit unsure about), and I worry that Wolvix in general isn't as up to date as it could/should be.
But Wolvix — most of it, at leat — continues to be updatable via slapt-get/Gslapt without the whole thing going to hell.
In contrast, if I were to install ZenWalk today, I'd be sure to create a separate partition for /home (which I always do anyway these days) so I could wipe and reinstall between releases. Or I could do the not-unthinkable and dual- or triple-boot a bunch of Slackware-derived distros on a single box and see how I feel about it in a month or so.
I've got a laptop that needs a FOSS OS, and while I've been thinking Debian or Ubuntu because that's my "default" choice, I may give ZenWalk a try just to see how it runs. All of these new features do look like things I'd enjoy having:
Kernel 2.6.27.10 with gspca (supports many USB webcams) XFCE 4.6 (beta2, already very stable) Faster boot (tunned init scripts, with realtime I/O scheduler) PAM authentication has been added to the system Wicd is becoming the main network configuration tool Improved suspend/hibernate, with XFCE Power Manager new Netpkg with orphan dependencies and "offline operation" support New Zenpanel with integrated Disk Manager, Wifi and Wired Network Manager Gksu keyring based desktop granting system New artwork Many new applications
And it looks (from this 5.2 announcement) that the license-violation issue is at least beginning to be taken care of:
Source repository: many faithful users asked us to provide an online source repository rather than sending source Dvds on-demand. So we have been working on a mechanism to allow the development team to instantly publish source tarballs for any new package we release. This source repository is now 100% ready for ISO packages, and the contributed packages (aka "extra") source repository is being populated actively.
Zenwalk's Community Spirit: As the community thrives, Zenwalk now has a web-accessible Package Database and a conveniently arranged User Repository. Please also have a look at the Zenwalk Companion - a guide to the extra packages available to Zenwalk. Please see the zenwalk.org website for more information, and welcome to support.zenwalk.org for bug reports and friendly discussion between Linux purists :)
Of course while I love systems that are updated forever (as in Wolvix), I'd love even more to see a new version of Wolvix to appear — and if that happened, I'd be a very happy camper, indeed.
It's been a long time since I ran ZenWalk, and I can't say how its application mix would meet my needs, but the thing I like so much about Wolvix is that it has virtually everything I want or need as far as applications go, and its installer and control panel also match my needs better than just about everything else out there, too.
Not that I've run Wolvix in the past six or more months, due to a combination of the issues I raised above, then the time I spent running Debian and Ubuntu, and now having my "main" laptop run OpenBSD, which I've been quite happy with by the way.
But some time back in the Linux world, and not necessarily in Ubuntu or Debian, is starting to sound pretty good.
4 Comments
Leave a comment
About this blog
I agree about Wolvix, its in definite need of an update, its the only live-cd I have had that died before the distro updated (although this could also be because I left in in the sun for 3 days). I do like the fact that wolvix makes creating a bootable flash drive integrated into its installation process, and its frugal install works similar to Puppy. I have never tried Zenwalk surprisingly, but Vector 6 is very fast as a live-cd, I have not tried RC1, only the Beta, and at least for me the installer was broken. I still have to stump for TinyMe, I find Openbox/LXDE to be a nice change of pace from xfce, and its repositories are huge. If you are looking for pure speed, give the cooking version of SliTaz a spin, although I imagine the repositories will not have everything you're looking for...
I found the save process for Wolvix when in live CD or frugal mode to be less than reliable. Maybe I just didn't know how to do it right, but I seem to remember there being a bit too much user intervention during every boot. But in a traditional install, Wolvix is excellent, if not quite as fast as other Slack-based distros.
And if you do chose a traditional install, you can update Wolvix with Gslapt or slapt-get, which pulls both from Slackware 11 mirrors as well as the Wolvix repository.
I don't know when I'll get time for that Linux install, but hopefully soon.
I've been having fun with my G4 lately. I even got wireless working with a PCMCIA card — and this is a desktop. I have a short entry on this set to publish on Monday morning. I can't believe that a non-Apple wireless card will work in an old PowerPC machine running Linux, but it does.
Thats amazing as I never got wifi to work on my Powermac and I was running OS X 10.4. I didn't want to pony up the ludicrous prices for Apple wireless, so I tried both PCI and USB wifi solutions I had lying around, but with the same success I had installing an alternative OS. Luckily a 100' CAT5 cable and some selective drilling made connecting to the internet possible.
In the OpenBSD hardware list for the MacPPC port (which is in the install document), it lists all kinds of PCI and PCMCIA cards that are supposed to work.
I had seen a thread somewhere about non-Apple PCI wireless cards with the same chipset as the Airport working even in OS X.
And since the Orinoco WaveLAN works in everything from my Powerbook 1400 under Mac System 7 through PC hardware made today, I had a feeling that it might work.
As I say in the original entry, the card is too long, and I can't close the case when I'm using it.
Possible solutions include a PCI Wi-Fi card (I thought I had one but I can't find it now), or some kind of adapter cable for PCMCIA cards that allows them to either turn a corner (90-degree angle) or let them flap around a bit.
I'm still considering wiring up the room with Ethernet because for generic Web access I think Wi-Fi is OK, but for file sharing I'd prefer to have it wired. I'll never have every box able to use WPA2 for wireless encryption, and I'll never have every box working on Wi-Fi AND able to get the signal, so I think wired Ethernet may be best. And even though this G4 is pretty old, it has a gigabit Ethernet interface, so I'll be stringing CAT6 in case I ever go in that direction for the network.