you can use a boot CD and mount+chroot your zenwalk system.
after that "grub-install" or "lilo -v" to have your bootloader back
(you can google on it, there's a lot of howtos about repairing bootloaders)

I found it easy enough to install, but then I wasn't bothered about configuring wi-fi. It's a good little distro.

I think Zenwalk is a good OS for noobs or people with slow computers and don't have the money to buy a new pc... the only problem I had with Zenwalk is the Dutch language support. I installed Zenwalk on someones computer but she can't read/understand English so I had to reinstall windows 98... sad but true now I'm searching for a Linux OS that fully supports the dutch language and work well on a slow system???

Grtzz DM

I'd say Zenwalk is noob friendly (in fact very friendly) but then, the noob also has to occasionally be willing to study the manual/wiki/forum if he encounters some difficulty along the way.

Of course then, he wont be a noob very long

I was (am? ) still quite a noob when I got more involved with Zenwalk a bit less than a year ago & in this time, I learned to recompile the kernel, create a LiveCD, create simple bash scripts, the basics of packaging & this & that...

Zenwalk community & its main developper JP is very much noob friendly, but the biggest friends of all noobs (& the one who tought me the most) is guth... most faithful poster here at LinuxQuestions Zenwalk section...

As someone who is a complete linux noob, I have found Zenwalk to be just what I was looking for to learn linux on.
An old Dell Optiplex came my way (free at the town dump ), and I knew that I wanted to try out linux; so I looked around at a bunch of distros, and ZW matched my needs. Install was a breeze, the community has been wonderful when it comes to solving problems, and there is a wealth of information in the forums.
The biggest obstacle I've had to overcome-as a noob-has been doing coding type stuff in terminal, but I'm getting better .
I have found ZW so comfortable that I have a dual boot on my main computer with ZW and Win2k (linux still scares the wife

You guys may be interested then:
I just installed Zenwalk 4.2 onto a PII (yes, I know) machine (64MiB RAM, 4GiB HDD, intel chipset) for a 68yr old granny what really only wanted to be able to write stuff and look at photos.

The first trial was ubuntu - which wouldn't run on this machine. Next was DSL - which worked OK and verified the hardware. Granny enjoyed herself with it so I considered installing that or maybe some subset of Debian... got a look at zenwalk answering another question and thought: hmmm...

She loves it (and we're talking about someone who has trouble using the "start" menu in windows!) and finds it (gasp) intuitive to use.

The install went kinda OK - but it wouldn't accept lilo.conf unless the filesystem was ext3. Don't know what that's about. But I found the partitioning step to be very painless and even "fun". his also makes the first time I've used LiLo.

Didn't detect the soundcard (legacy ISA card of unknown provenance).

Even on this extreme legacy hardware - Zenwalk creaks not at all. In fact, the machine behaves as zippy as my notebook on Ubuntu (though I see the cpu gets maxed out quite a bit more often)... and much more dolphin-like than the old Win95 that was there before.

kpkg is not a problem... so far there has been nothing needing an actual source install (though I got a query about the kernel the other day... so I think I'll be doing some basic programming tutoring soon.) and you could say this granny has taken to zenwalk like, well, a dolphin to water.

There seems to be this thing that happens to people who move over to linux - after they get used to the fact that it is a different operating system, they start expecting far more from their computer that they thought possible.

Here, someone who put updating windows via MSN in the "too hard" basket, is now thinking about kernel upgrades and shell scripts. I think it's the freedom: when you spend your life on your knees, and finally stand, the altitude goes to your head.

On a general note:

I do linux installs and support for home users and the odd smaller business.
I think most thoughtful newcomers would have little problem with the installer - it is well explained right up to the network part (which can always be altered post-install) - and has a curiously friendly feeling to it which is quite a trick for a text interface.

However - the user would have needed some technical knowledge of computer hardware, partitioning, networking and so on.

So long as the hardware is not bleeding edge, however, there should be no problem.

(Note: 4.2 came out recently and has quite a recent kernel an all... so there are unlikely to be any major issues with anything a month or so old. Major headaches seem to come when some hardware configuration becomes popular right after the major release... anyone tried this with dual core?)

The usual headaches with linux remain:

proprietary media formats
pci modem setup
wireless setup
DRI 3D accel.

I'd consider Zenwalk to be at least as well set up to cope as the big boys, and better than some. This is an adult distribution: not a toy.

Hmmm... has anyone installed Enlightenment to Zen?

The default Zenwalk kernel doesn't offer isa support...
however you can find one that does here: http://users.zenwalk.org/user-accoun...sz/kernel-isa/

Some work is being done on a Zen package which you should be able to install simply via netpkg. It is now in testing & should be available to all very soon...

Yeah - I sorta found that out. There are quite a few "How do I get my Isa soundcard going?" threads in support.zenwalk.org

It is probably better to rip out the isa soundcard and install a PCI one, cheap second hand and I may even have one in one of these boxes... (If I cared, I'd have put it in a thread of it's own... but you weren't to know: sorry.)

I note: the isa modem goes fine. There is a dialog in the post install sequence that asks if I want to attempt to detect legacy ISA soundcards (no soundcard detected, do you want to... etc). I figure the repeated questions about this on the forums could be users thinking this means that their card may be detected?

This lady has a scanner which comes with an isa card (guess: scsi scanner - this is a Genius I). So if she ever wants to fire it up, mayhap she will need the isa kernel?

Try supergrub!
http://supergrub.forjamari.linex.org/

SGD is still a wee bit spotty when the system has 2 or more HDDs. Otherwise it basically just automates the "grub install" method. What the hey - yet another live disk to the collection.

Zenwalk has a slightly steeper learning curve than, say, the Ubuntus. But then, if you're really interested in GNU/Linux, who wants things to be too easy?
(Me for one, obviously, since I've re-installed Xubuntu.)

This was my problem too. I have Zenwalk on an old desktop that I fart around with and love it, but I have to use Mepis on my laptop because it worked "out of the box." It seemed too difficult to get everything up and running properly with Zenwalk. One suggestion to Zenwalk developers would be why not include Madwifi with the installation? It seems that there is a high percentage of Atheros-based wlan cards out there... Just my thoughts on the subject. I just haven't had the time to learn to compile from source yet, but it is on my to-do list.

most (all?) wifi driver(or more often firmware only) missing aren't there because of some license problem. However some driver/firmware (mad wifi is one of them i think) were packaged by users and who provided a like on the forum.

Each distro has its way to solve this problem (pay or not, ...).