If anyone wants a Slackware-based distro that comes with Gnome, this is it. Naturally all the applications are stable. Media codecs are pre-installed and all the files I tested played, even the one which fails in many distros.

On previous experience of Zenwalk, I was expecting problems, and there were a few. IceCat (= Firefox) was not set up with reliable instructions for mime types: e.g. it opens all pdf files with Gimp. CUPS is not enabled by default, and you can't install a printer without it. The software installer didn't work at first because no mirrors had been enabled.

All of these problems can be sorted, but they involve the sort of hands-on configuration that someone new to Linux would not know how to do, and there is no mention of them in the manual.

There is also a slightly confusing situation of having two configuration tools: control panel (listed in menu) and control centre (with an icon on the panel, but missing from menu). The second has a link to the first, but not vice versa!

Zenwalk is still not in the same league as Salix or Vector, but it can now be recommended to the intermediate or experienced user, especially one who wants a Slackware-based distro with Gnome.