The CD starts by offering to check itself. This is not a checksum test, but a roll-call of files, and the missing ones are Ubuntu items that shouldn’t be there anyway. The installer is easy to use, and offers a good selection of filing systems as well as encryption. Installation was reasonably fast; unlike Ubuntu, the codecs are on the disk, instead of taking 30 minutes to download. It did want to download things, though; I’m not sure what, since I’d told it not to check for updates. The installed bootloader includes any other OS on the computer in its menu.

ZevenOS is Ubuntu based, uses the Xfce desktop, and defaults to a BeOS-style deskbar instead of a panel. The Xfce panel can easily be added, but not all the facilities are available; installing xfce-goodies fixes that. There’s a generous supply of software, especially for multimedia, which all worked well except for Gnome-mplayer. Installing Parole from the repository gave perfect video performance, even of my ‘mp4 from hell’ that foils so many distros. All the Ubuntu repositories are set up, as well as the ZevenOS one. The Ubuntu Software Centre was very slow on my computer, so I used Synaptic.

For configuration, use MAGI, and to manage daemons, download Bum. The default keyboard shortcuts were unfamiliar, since (strangely) the Sawfish window manager is used instead of Xfwm. The Sawfish configuration tool is a bit old-fashioned, but usable. A tip: if you want Alt-F1 to open the menu, the command is xfce4-popup-applicationsmenu.

ZevenOS seems to have come of age since its last version. It now compares well with other Xfce distros, and seems more reliable than Xubuntu.