Welcome to the Zenwalk Linux Forum
 

This forum is for the discussion of Zenwalk Linux. Enjoy.

--jeremy

Yay! I was wondering why there wasn't one...

Welcome to the club Zenwalk ;)

hi
 

hello im one of the developers of zenwalk linux.Im the e17 package maintainer.Im also the official
e17 package maintainer for slackware linux.Hit us with your questions well be more then happy to answer them!
thanx
l8r
liberion

Hi,

very cool to see the new Zenwalk forum here.

Sweet. Asked and I was given. Thanks jeremy and thanks to the developers that talked to jeremy.

We were very happy to have the forum here.

Helping our users is a big priority for us.

As alot of our "new users/Slackware users" are already familiar with LQ it was a logical choice.

I remember when I depepended heavily on the Slackware forum here in the past and I was never disapointed with the great amount of helpful people here.

LQ is a great place with friendly people and Jeremy is a great guy.

:)

-AxXium

Thats great! Next week i will install Zenwalk on my computer. I am from Ukraine and Russia and there will be a lot of question about localization :)

I saw that. I was looking around the Zenwalk Website and Saw that your contribution was tremendous AxXium. I am trying to get my linux skills up to par and hopefully I can start making major contributions.

Linux skills come with time and work. The fastest way to sharpen those skills is to throw fear out the window. A computer is a machine. Try to break it and then fix it, hehe. Volunteering for testing, reading forum posts and building software packages is where I got my start. Also, I find that I actually learn things by helping others.

You can learn to build packages from the information pages at our latest website http://users.zenwalk.org where we have listed howtos, package rules and other goodies. If your interested in building or have already built packages, email me for an FTP account and submit them. That may be the chance to get your foot in the door.

As far as games go, I run the gaming site. I am in the process of moving my Zenwalk Linux gaming site http://www.zengamer.tuxfamily.org/ to a new site http://tuxgames.net/index.php

The reason for the move is that I can host several distros to create a "Linux" gaming site offering game packages and information to as many distros as possible. Remember, not all distros have major game repositories and we actually have games that Debian doesn't have because they do not have a "D" comppiler. (I read their public gaming mailing list)

:)

AxXium

Zenwalk forum
 

Thanks Jeremy for this forum. I've been using Zenwalk since version 2.2. I tried minislack but I
couldn't get it to be happy with my video card. Thanks again, RW

Hey friends, nice to c this forum here, i jst downloaded zenwalk 2.8 and not yet burnt on to the cd for installation as i am lil busy, but i hope it will get install on my system with P4 1.7GHz and 350Ram, well i am currently using suse10.1 and Mandriva 2006 on my system, but i hope zenwalk will beat them up in all the aspects.
Hats off to the developers and thanks for your contributions . I would love to be an open source developer, either getting into some open source company for job or just normal, so any 1 please guide me how to be an open source developer.
Thanks :)

This is asked a lot on LQ - a good way to start is to find an existing project, preferably one you have an interest in, and see if there's any help they need - contact the devs.

Alternatively, if you feel the program needs extra functionality, write something and then contact the devs to see if they are interested in it.

Really, the best way to do it .... is to do it!

Well i lost my fist impression about zenwalk flavor when i tried to install it on my system since it didnt had any eye catching GUI support for intallation process like suse or mandriva supports, so i didnt installed the os at all.
I think developers should provide agud gui for zenwalk to make it more interesting to use as well as attractive.


Thanks xavierP, that was a valuable suggestion and i apolozie to post that qs here instead of putting it on LQ forum. By the way i also wanted to ask rather also its my curiosity to know, is there any way a fresher who is passed out from graduation college with out any working experience able to get into an open source company for job viz. suse(novell), redhat, mandriva, etc. if so then how?? and as i am residing in india.
Thanks.

That is what makes zenwalk so great. It has a pretty quick install due to no overhead of an installer. Why give up? Have you asked for Help yet? The installation process is easier then you might expect.

just pop the cd in.
when it boots up to where it says boot: press enter.
then take the defualts of the keymap if you live in the us.
it should then say login as root.
after logging in type fdisk /dev/hda (hdd)
or fdisk /dev/sda (for scsi or Sata drives)
then use n
enter p
then 1
then specifiy the begining number. Then say +512M
then use n again
enter p
then 2
then use the rest of the disk for the root partition.
then hit t
then 1
then use code 82 for swap.
then use w to write the partition table.
then type setup.
go to addswap.
after it formats then it will make you click enter on /dev/hda2 for the / partition.
then just choose full install. the rest is pretty simple. Need more help just ask on this forum.

I just printed out some things from the tuxgames website. I am currently learning C++. What else should I learn to help contribute to Zenwalk and your website www.tuxgames.net. I would like to start out by building a zenwalk rt61 wireless module. I saw on your website that you already have rt2500

ok i was just wondering what kind of package manager this distro had becaue i read on the site that it said network managment tool. so i was wondering if maybe it was like portage... and also i was wondering how light weight this distro really is because ubuntu people like but it is not high performance enough for me so if you could tell me on a scall from 1 to 10 (1 being ubuntu speed (breezy badger) and 10 being gentoo and 8 being slackware) that would be great.

I would rate it about a 6 but that is becuase I am using it with a lot of programs. As for the package manager you would use netpkg or if you downloaded a package from linuxpackages.net you would use pkgtool for .tgz

well yes doing all those things is pritty easy tho, but it would be better if it had a good gui installer like other distro, which will attract users. well i didnt gave up jst coz of gui stuffs but i already have mandriva and suse installed and working awsome. So planned to install it some time later. But still lost first impression when compared to other eye catching distros.

I guess I can see your point. If it is not easy then most users won't give it a try. By easy I mean installation at this point. But I am one who is open to anything and I guess that is how one should be if using linux. Open to trying any idea at least once.

I am curious about Zenwalk, how well it might meet my needs on this Compaq Presario V5201US with a broadcom 4318, Air Force One internal wirelss? I am currently running Mandriva 2006.0, which I don't have support for suspend and power save. I tried Fedora Core 5, which took care of that problem, but I couldn't get the ndiswrapper working to use the Broadcom 4318. Does Zenwalk come with source files so you can compile drivers, such as the driver for the Zydas 1211 chipsets, which I might add works quite well on Mandriva 2006.0. I don't consider myself a newbie, but neither am I an expert. Just curious, Jim

Nice to see Zenwalk get on this forum! I've been using Zenwalk as my primary desktop for a while and think its great!

Cheers!

Seti aka Jerome

You only need to understand the very bacics of BASH. C++ is not needed to package games.

We have written a few things in C and Perl, but for the most part BASH is the most widely used.

If you want to build games, contact me from the list at TuxGames. To build any other packages contact us at ZenCommunity.

TuxGames: http://tuxgames.net/index.php
ZenCommunity: http://users.zenwalk.org/

:)

-Michael

No offense, but that is the silliest thing I've heard in a long time. Would you turn down a box filled with money if there was no pictures on the box? We have an online installation guide with pictures. Our entire installation process takes 20 mins and is the easiest I've see in quite some time. SuSE and Mandriva have much more confusing installers.

Take a look at our manual here (Printable PDF version): http://manual.zenwalkers.tuxfamily.org/manual_en.pdf

Also, our next release, Zenwalk-3.0, is in testing now with an even easier to use installer.

I really hope I did not offend you because that was not my point, but you really need to think about how important a "pretty GUI installer" is when you will see it only once. You will not use it everyday, therefore what is the point?

:confused:

-Michael

If they are going to change the installer around do you think they could give you an option to use either the new installer or use the old one. I prefer the cli install as it seems to blow past all these gui installers.

Will Do. Probably in the next couple of months. Right now I just can't devote the time I want to as other priorities have taken over.

The installer still uses cli/ncurses as it did before and is still blazingly fast. What was changed was the ability to partition while still being in the installer. Before you had to partition your discs via cli/fdisk or cfdisc, then run the command "setup" at which time the installer would begin. There are some other nice changes as well but no ribbons, pink ponies and smilies to slow you down or get in your way.

You'll like it.

;-)

-Michael

New user here, very happy with Zenwalk
 

I'm glad to see that a distribution like Zenwalk is available. SUSE has been my distribution for about 15 months, and I've been surely but slowly moving towards Slackware.

xfce is quite a change from KDE, but I do like its simplicity. I would love to see WindowMaker as an option, but in any case I will continue to use Zenwalk.

Great work!

@Zenwalk admin
Well its okey it didnt offended me at all by your point, but what you pointed out in your words was worthy thought. Well i wanted to ask a question to the developers of zenwalk.
Why didnt they develop this zenwalk as like other distros yes may be i am talking about the GUI installers or any other thing which might be missing??
> Just becoz zenwalk should be less is space (MB)
OR
>Developers dont wish to provide it.
OR
>Do developers things its useless .
OR
>Developers thinking that making zenwalk more eye catching and iteractive will cause more overhead to them???

I ask apolozies if any one got annoyed by this post, as i am just curious to know.

nothing wrong about being curious. I don't have a true answer but I would venture to say that since Zenwalk was built from slackware, They wanted it to reamin as close to it as possible but still make it a very user friendly system at the same time.

I've used various Unix's and now Linux. Mainly RH / Fedora. What could zenwalk offer me that RH does not do well ....or what advantages does zenwalk have that would prompt me to install it.

Well, Zenwalk is probably one of the most eye-candy GNU/Linux OS around. You will notice the desktop integration, the icon theme uniformity between apps, artwork homogeneity between the boot manager prompt, the boot splash, the Gdm greeter, and desktop theme... as soon as you install it.

This said, Zenwalk provides a graphical ncurses based installation wizard. We believe that it's a very reliable system, because video independant. Of course the video card, network, sound card, and other devices are autoconfigured during the installation process, as well as other little things like numlock.

An Xwindow based installer is useless, yes, really, and can only give you troubles on some machines. The install program is intended to be used only once, so you shouldn't worry about it (I find it lovely btw, it looks more professional than a pink poney ;)

Another example of something that Zenwalk does differently from other Linux systems : removable devices automount is not based on HAL, which is known to be buggy and slow. We do it at low level, with udev... Everything in Zenwalk is designed toward simplicity, reliability and performance !

In Zenwalk, most of system administration tools provide GTK guis, I really believe that you will enjoy its ease of use, and unbeatable speed.

Wait 2 days for Zenwalk 3.0 to be available ;)

Have fun ;)

JP

If anything I would say speed and the community. Zenwalk has a great community for support. That was one of the things that made me switch over. That and I loved slackware but needed a good distro for my laptop. Zenwalk was the answer. Just like slackware but has the 2.6 kernel installed by defualt.

Sweet. So you guys use the GTK tool kit. I was wondering what most people used for a user interface for languages such as C/C++. Now I know.

in fact most of Zenwalk specific tools are in bash script, because (mostly):
- no/few dependance(s)
- easier to modify configuration file

Really. I seen a book on bash scripting but was not sure If I could do the things that c++ can do. What all do you guys use bash scripting for in Zenwalk. for example was your netconfig program written in C or in bash.

at least those ;)

But C/C++ is a lot more powerfull for a lot of other things.
Scripting is good for configuration/files small modifications, administration ...
C/C++/java/.... are more for applications coding... (servers, big GUIs, games, ....)

Each (type of) language has its + and -, all depend of what you want to do....

Just your friendly neighborhood geek with a really stupid question...

I saw the notice about this new distro on the LQ homepage and thought I'd stop in.

My first thought was that Zenwalk was referring to itself being a Xen friendly distro... I know understand the the Zen reference is about state of mind.

However, I still should ask: How Xen friendly is Zenwalk?

Thanks,

Well thanks for your valuable information about my doubt Mr. JPGU (Zenwalk creator) :)

As your saying that zenwalk box has more amazing things inside than from outside, i am sure i wish to give it a try now.
Well i have another doubt here, can any body who have used fedora/suse/mandriva and also zenwalk, can you please explain me how those two distros differ eachother.
And what are the advantages of using zenwalk.

Again its a curious question.
Thanks :)

Fedora is not a bad distro but to me it seems like it hides things from you. When I say hide I mean everything has a gui wizard. Also I had speed issues with Fedora and Mandriva.

Don't take this the wrong way but we can sit here all day long and talk about the good parts of Zenwalk till we're all blue in the face. Every person has their own expectations from software and everyone has their own personal distro. Mine is Slackware and Zenwalk. Yours may be something else. I think the best bet would be just to go ahead install it and make your own decision. I did that for fedora, Zenwalk, Slackware, Debian, Ubuntu, OpenSuSE, Mandriva, Gentoo, and Arch linux.

I have tried many, many distros including the ones you have mentioned and some you probably never heard of.

Zenwalk is the only Linux group that I wanted to be part of. Others never felt so close to home. Every RPM based distro was slow and terrble to customize and maintain. I felt helpless to a slow moving beast of a distro. Gentoo was amazaing, a great ride and I do not regret trying it. Slackware is really cool but feels dusty and dark.

Zenwalk is indescribable. It perfect IMHO. What do you expect me to say. I love it so much that I asked to be part of it. My love only continues to grow day by day. I never felt this way about software. No I'm not mentally ill with a PC fetish. Zenwalk is a terrific group of people surrounding the software. Once you try it and join the forums, you'll know what I mean.

-Michael

Well said!!!!

I don't heard anyone trying to use zenwalk with Xen. But if you do so, please tell us the result of your experiments ... if i had more time i think i'd already try.

Hey thanks for your opinion MR Admin. Well i am sure of installing it now. Since every body is tlkin alot of about zenwalk, that impresses me to give it a shot now :). Very well Axxium you tlked about the people involving in this zenwalk community either a developer or user. I just want to know who are these developers and are they working for bigger companies like novel or sun or any other and one more thing i always wanted to ask is these developers spend lot of time in developing these stuffsm yes they are great people. cheers to those :). But i got my zenwalk copy as free i mean i downloaded it off net and these developers though spending lot of time and atlast they sell their work for free, but what i am thinking is how these developers are getting benefited if they keep selling their product for free to every one, yes i know that some people will donate some money but i dont think thats enough for them and for their valuable contributions as well as their beautiful minds.
Again a curious questions about an opensource developer :)
Thanks.
cheers to all of you people. :)

The developers do this to give back. I am currently trying to get into developement. Currently I just want to be a software tester but then I will move into Development. My reason is simply I have used linux for a while and taken alot (mostly information) but I want to give back. That is what makes open source software so powerful. Why must everything some people do must benifit them? Just to let you know I don't work at Novell, or Sun, but work as a Systems Analysts at a Casino.

course jstephens your working and also you wanted to be an open source developer too infact i also have dream of becoming open source developer from along time, but since no encouragement and no proper guidence in this country i cant achive it, as you know about india :( mean how people here are and how selfish they are also too.
Well the reason i asked about being benefited is for their living purpose, i mean every body needs money and for that many people do many different types of jobs to get it, so what i thought was if these developers work hard and spend alot of time then how are they going to earn, hence i asked that are they working in some companies or not.
Thanks jstephens for replying. :)

I see. you last post makes bette sense now. But I am still going to venture out and say most of this is done on free time and they have the good ol 8 -5 job.[not me unfortunately]

Thanks for replying stephens, so accordign to you those great people have 8-5 jobs in hand huh wow thats amazing, i think they computer genius. If i am able to contact these guys i think i can turn out to be like them 1 day.
Hoping for best :)

You would be supprised to find out that some of these people may not be computer techs. I have ran into a couple that are accountants by day.

wow thats really wonderfull, how r they managed to get soo expertise in the computer world and turn out to be genius. i wish i too wanna be like them :(