Guest Post: Introducing Zenwalk Linux 7.0 Live CD Version

A few days ago the Zenwalk project released its Live CD of Zenwalk Linux 7.0. Currently Zenwalk offers the main Xfce edition, a Core edition which foregoes the X windowing system and is intended to be a starting point to building a custom desktop or server system, an edition with Openbox as window manager, an older Gnome version that is still at version 6.4, and the Live CD version of the edition based on the Xfce desktop environment. In this guest post, Bernhard Hoffmann walks us through the Zenwalk Live CD version.

Introducing Zenwalk Linux 7.0 Live CD Version

By Bernhard Hoffmann

Zenwalk is based on Slackware but is only available and optimized for the i686 architecture, so no 64-bit version yet, but it will also work on older machines with i486 processors. As the new release is geared toward lower resource usage and older hardware, you only need a modest 256MB memory and a Pentium 3 class processor, although 512MB of memory will guarantee a better response.

The Zenwalk "Live" edition is a complete and installable Live CD that can be used as a rescue tool or just to get a first taste of what running Zenwalk is like. It's a 688 MB download and comes with a slightly older 2.6.37-3 kernel. Users get the same set of applications included in the Xfce edition. That means they can immediately be productive programming in C, Perl, Python or Ruby, watching videos, connecting digital cameras and more.

The Xfce desktop environment is at version 4.8 here. The Zenwalk team has always had the latest Xfce in its releases, which may appeal to users wishing the latest Xfce version had made it into Slackware 13.37. Apart from development libraries, system recovery and partitioning tools and the usual accessories in a standard Xfce desktop, many graphical desktop applications are included. Zenwalk subscribes to the one-app-per-task philosophy, but there is plenty of extra software included.

For example, the LibreOffice suite, in version 3.3.1, is present, and the Orage Calendar and Globaltime world clock are too. They can take care of basic scheduling needs and tracking different time zones. Gmusicbrowser, which replaced Exaile a long time ago, is included to play music collections or just the odd mp3 file. Icecat is the browser, and is basically a rebranded Mozilla Firefox with small changes made to enhance privacy and security. Icedove (Thunderbird) comes complete with Lightning pre-installed which means you have a mostly complete PIM (personal information manager).

Geany is also included for coding needs, but not Bluefish or any other HTML editor. ISO master will be useful should you be planning to remaster, and the LSHW hardware lister as well as Grsync should come in handy too.

In addition to the above applications, which resemble the Xfce edition as closely as possible, the Live CD also has three utilities of its own. These are LiloFix, which allows you to fix a corrupted Lilo boot loader, the ZenInstaller, which allows you to install from the live environment, and LiveClone to create a custom live ISO from your currently running system.

Root login has been disabled at this time to improve security, but a password can be set at boot time with tabbing into cheat code mode. The old root password for ZenLive is still available if booting in text mode.

The project is quite well documented, and the left side of the Zenwalk website has several links to manuals,a wiki and a forum section, which are well done. There is even a direct link to a Live CD manual which is available in several languages. If you are new to Live CDs, definitely look into this.

This 7.0 version of Zenwalk also has full support for Japanese characters, with Anthy and international language support loading on a separate small panel in the lower right hand corner of your display. Internationalization was obviously a strong action point for this release, with the user being able to choose from 12 languages at boot prompt.

However, the best aspect of this release in my book is the inclusion of a PDF file on the desktop that is a step-by-step guide on how to create your own Slackware-based installable live system including boot screen customization.

Overall, this release is a winner, although it may appeal mostly to more advanced users. Read the release announcement for much more on Zenwalk Linux 7.0, here.