I have said earlier that if I did not discover PCLinux (first discovery of Desktop Live) I would have chosen Zenwalk as my standard and live Linux distribution and lived with it while experimenting with all the other Linux distributions for fun.
If I do not make special mention of it here I am doing diservice to Slackware which is as old as Linux.
20 years to the count and Zenwalk is a derivative that took its roots from it but now can stand on its own right in Linux world.
I have used Knoppix, Puppy Linux and Demo Linux before going back to year 2003 but none of them were desktop oriented at least at the beginning.
The differences are basically PCLinux is KDE based an it has full blown FullMonty.
Five CDs
1. Standard 323 MiB
2. Zenwalk Core 329 MiB
3. Zenwalk OpebBox 503 MiB
4. Zenwalk Gnome 665 MiB
5. Zenwalk Live 688 MiB
If you look at the difference between the Live Cd and the Gnome Cd the difference in MiB is only 30 MiB and that is the amount of memory needed for including the Live Script and I cannot understand why some developers do not include it in a CD or DVD.
Installer script and UnetBootIn are other utilities that should be essential part of a Linux CD without much a do.
Copied from their Home site.
Modern and user-friendly (latest stable software, selected applications)
Very fast (optimized for performance capabilities)
Rational (one mainstream application for each task)
Complete (full development/desktop/multimedia environment)
Evolutionary (advanced network package management tool - Netpkg)
The Zenwalk Project aims to create a lightweight Linux distribution (through using only one application per task on the release ISO image), optimization for a specific processor architecture to increase execution speed, and introduces a comprehensive package management system with dependency resolution.
Zenwalk is a Linux distribution founded by Jean-Philippe Guillemin. It was originally based on Slackware. Since its creation, the distribution has become very different from Slackware in most regards while still maintaining compatibility with its binary packages. Zenwalk aims to be a modern and multi-purpose Linux distribution by focusing on Internet applications, multimedia and programming tools.
