While reading this thread.

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...rt-4175563947/

It made me curious about Zenwalk as a lighter, faster alternative to Slackware, not that I want to get rid of Slackware, but more as a lighter version to run alongside of.
When I recently updated my packages using slackpkg, I watched the process and realized there are a lot of packages that come with Slackware that I will never use. Example Samba, although this may be fun to try sometime in the future, this file sharing is not essential
for me at this time.Thunderbird mail, since I use web mail all of the dependencies associated with Thunderbird are not needed. Sea Monkey?
although this is an okay browser, I can't see it replacing firefox.
Just a few examples. I have never tried Zenwalk, but understand it is based on Slackware.
I am interested in hearing from anyone with personal experience with Zenwalk.

Zenwalk has its own forum, apparently. Perhaps you should ask there.

1 members found this post helpful.

Thanks.

If Samba and Thunderbird just sit there and do nothing, your system won't be any faster with or without them. On the other hand, if you want a more streamlined installation of a Slackware desktop out of the box, you might give Salix or MLED a spin.

Cheers,

Niki

You could also have a look to Salix as thay have one desktop per edition and sometimes ship lighter programs but still stay compatible with Slackware.

See also http://docs.salixos.org/wiki/Package...from_Slackware.

@offgridguy

I have to ask why you would even care that you have apps you will never use? All they "waste" is hard drive space. You may not even realize that these apps you "will never use" have taken considerable strain off your package management. I've used Zenwalk both Live and as a full install and it is not noticeably faster than Slackware.

One application per task has zero effect on speed as long as the admin/user doesn't leave services running that support only those apps you never use. Optimization at all levels, both kernel modification and through building from source, is available on ALL distros. Dependency resolution is far and away heavier on resources and FYI you will find that Zenwalk has very little in common with Slackware for quite some time now. The best I got out of Zenwalk was introductions to some pretty cool software I'd never have checked out otherwise. IIRC I didn't spend more than 10 hours in it and now it's just gathering dust when I should throw it out as it is 2 years old. It wasn't bad, just no great shakes and didn't offer anything of importance I didn't already have sine I run Slackware w/ a custom, realtime, lowlatency kernel, setup for my family of CPUs.

I'd suggest trying ZenwalkLive even though it's been handed off to an enthusiastic fan since the original maintainer bailed. It still seems to be decent and you may learn something from it which you can apply to Slackware, which in the long run is the best plan.... lightyears better than spreading yourself thinly.

@ enorbet, Thanks for the very informative reply, yours and the others make me just want to stick with Slackware.

I agree that if you want something close to Slackware then check out SalixOS. The one application per task is only during install, you are of course free to install others. Slapt-get works well for installation dependencies and does not remove them automatically when you remove a program so no worries of "gutting" the system either.

I would say Slackware or Salix. As mentioned they also have a very nice Live CD.

FWIW there is nothing inherently wrong in running multiple user accounts with very different settings or even multiple instances of Slackware where perhaps one is a Volkswagon and the other a AA Fuel Dragster. I don't know about anybody else but I seem to learn the most on a system I don't care about since that is it's raison d'etre ... to let me torture it mercilessly LOL. In short, Test Beds r0X!

Thanks everyone, Salix does sound appealing, I just checked out their site.

I wanted to update this thread. I have since installed Zenwalk and am giving it a try. I opted for Zenwalk over Salix after reading that Salix has gone away from the su command in favor of sudo. I really prefer the su - command, sudo reminds me too much of ubuntu.
As some posts suggested Zenwalk is not much faster than Slackware, I find it a bit faster but not a lot. It is simpler and easier to use for a beginner than Slackware though.
The Wifi connects easily with a minimum of configuration. The only real plus I can see over Slackware is Libre Office comes with it, although I assume Libre office is available for Slackware too, once I learn Slack builds. Zenwalk does download and install very quickly, due to it's size, about 750 mb. So far I like it, I am somewhat familiar with the xfce desktop, having used Lubuntu in the past. I am finding Zenwalk to be a lot like Slackware, which is what I was hoping for. One example being the formation of a root user account on install and leaving all the other user account controls to the discretion of the user. Very much like Slackware. The Lillo loader is used for both systems, which works well in my situation of being dual booted with Windows 7. The only time I had a problem with Lillo was when I was multi booted with three OS's. It wouldn't recognize the third system for some reason, which I got around by installing the third system,(with a grub menu) last. All told I think I'm going to like Zenwalk.

1 members found this post helpful.

You might try installing Slackware without the XAP group. Then add the few programs from XAP that you need after the base install is complete. I also skipped the KDE group and opted for a lighter alternative such as fluxbox.

Thank you. Which option did you use during the install?
The KDE group is a large group that I can do without as I don't like KDE anyway.

Lately with all the changes making in Slackware I've been watching other distributions that do not have systemd and I found one very interesting: VOID Linux. This distribution is rolling release but is very easy to keep local repositories. VOID Linux also kept daily repositories from recent months. I have not yet done a thorough investigation but everything I've seen so far I'm enjoying it a lot. I think it can be a distribution that can complement Slackware.

That would be a strange reason to switch distributions. Anyway, if you don't like the sudo command, just reinitialize your root account like I would do it on a Ubuntu server, for example:

Cheers,

Niki