Mini-Review: Zenwalk 6.2

By EricMesa

- 2 minutes read - 359 words

I looked at Zenwalk 6.0 back in June and Zenwalk 6.2 is now out.  I’m going to do a mini-review just comparing 6.0 to 6.2 to see what has changed.  This may end up being very short if it’s mostly the same.  One difference right away is that it’s using ext4 instead of XFS.  The install was basically the same.

[caption id=“attachment_3019” align=“aligncenter” width=“300” caption=“The final part of the Zenwalk 6.2 install”] The final part of the Zenwalk 6.2 install[/caption]

This time, however, there were no problems with the X server.  I figured this would definitely be fixed from Zenwalk 6.0 to Zenwalk 6.x.  It just came up and we had another great login screen.  I can’t stress enough how important this is for the new user.

[caption id=“attachment_3020” align=“aligncenter” width=“300” caption=“Zenwalk 6.2 login screen”] Zenwalk 6.2 login screen[/caption]

The icon theme is basically the same.  So, my only other real grip last time was with Netpkg.  Let’s see if that has improved.  Took me a few tries to get a mirror that worked, but eventually I got a mirror loaded.  You still need to hit “not installed” on the filters to see what’s not installed.  For whatever reason this doesn’t bother me as much as before - perhaps because I was expecting it.  Again, Gwibber was not available, but Conky was.

So, what do I think about Zenwalk 6.2?  Basically, as the version number indicates, it’s an incremental update on Zenwalk 6.0.  A bunch of programs got bumped to the latest versions.  The installer has a few little improvements (like X working).  Basically, everything I saw about Zenwalk 6.0 still stands.  It’s a very pretty looking distro, works well, is stable, has a good selection of programs, and is built on the great Slackware base/tradition.  Again, it was a pretty short review, but there wasn’t much that had changed vs 6.0.  And, to reiterate from my 6.0 review, I’d recommend it for anyone slightly past beginner and more.  So if you have used a few Linux distros, give this one a shot.  I think you’ll like how it feels and how responsive it is.  I thought it was really fast AND I had it running in a VM!