Zenwalk Live

Zenwalk Live is an open source project specifically designed for people who just want to test the Zenwalk Linux distribution before installing it or just use it as-is from a portable media device, such as a USB stick. It is built around the lightweight Xfce desktop environment and designed for low-end systems.

Zenwalk is an open source GNU/Linux operating system derived from the well known Slackware Linux distribution. By default, new Zenwalk releases are distributed only as Installable DVDs, and later available for download as Live DVDs.

Availability, supported architectures and boot options

The distribution is available for download as a single Live DVD ISO image that can be easily burned to a blank DVD disc using any CD/DVD burning software or written to a USB flash drive using Disks or UNetbootin apps. It can be used on either 32-bit or 64-bit hardware platforms and can be installed to a local disk.

Several languages are supported by the bootable medium, including English, Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, Polish, German, Danish, Czech, Dutch, Hungarian, and Japanese. In addition, users can choose between graphical or text-mode live sessions of the distribution.

Custom Xfce desktop and great selection of apps

As mentioned, Xfce is in charge of the graphical session in this Live edition of the Zenwalk Linux operating system, providing users with a beautiful and modern desktop environment that comprises a top panel for accessing the main menu, launching apps and interacting with running programs, as well as a dock located on the bottom edge of the screen.

Default applications include the Thunar file manager, Geany IDE, GIMP image editor, Geeqie image viewer, GMusicBrowser audio player, ISO Master CD image editor, MPlayer video player, Xfburn CD/DVD burning utility, Gajim instant messenger, Mozilla Thunderbird email and news client, Transmission torrent downloader, gFTP file transfer client, Mozilla Firefox web browser, and LibreOffice office suite.

Bottom line

Summing up, Zenwalk Live is a really great project. It designed from the ground up to be used by people who just want to test the Zenwalk operating system without installing anything on their computers.

What is new in this release:

• This is the first Zenwalk Live version that is NOT utillizing an AUFS enabled kernel but instead running unionfs in userspace via fuse on an unmodified Slackware generic kernel!
• It will also be probably the _last_ Zenwalk Live version supporting 32bit systems and it's gonna be very likely the last Zenwalk Live Edition that I do contribute to the Zenwalk project.
• Same as in Zenwalk Live 7.2 I decided to feature PAE for supporting more than 4 GB RAM on 32bit, but as a down side Zenwalk Live will not run on Pentium M (which lacks PAE support).
• Also in order to support additional locales and some extra content the ISO does not fits on a CD-ROM anymore, so same as last time it's a DVD-ROM ISO release again.
• As an extra feature I have splitted the base system having xfce now as a separate live module which allows you to even run Zenwalk Live Fluxbox Edition exclusively (without xfce4), just specify exclude=03-xfce.sxz desktop=fluxbox as a boot parameter
• As usual Zenwalk Live comes with full support for Japanese language featuring universal input method (UIM) and the anthy conversion engine. It is powered by the latest Slackware-Live-Scripts (thanks to Frank Endres, the developer of this superb framework!).
• Finally overall polishing and an out-of-the-box user experience and an easy to customize or rebuild live system is what you can expect from Zenwalk Live 7.4.

What is new in version 7.2:

• New xz compression squashfs 4.0 (now in vanilla kernel)
• All new simple Installer and Live-scripts
• On-the-fly optional live module activation during the running live session, thanks to aufs3 and my loader script
• Persistent changes feature is now supported, even over network shares!
• Besides standard Zenwalk package set, ZenLive provides some additional packages for more functionality
• Additional language packs & full Japanese language input support
• (should work for Korean and Chinese languages too)
• Fluxbox window manager and related apps now included in ZenLive ISO to provide an alternative to Xfce4
• nouveau driver included in kernel 3.2.5 is now enabled by default,
• providing a _good_ 3D acceleration performance and support for a wide range of NVidia Cards (no need to ship the proprietary driver anymore )
• Broadcom wifi STA proprietary driver (wl.ko) is shipped with this release as optional live module
• New bootsplash theme (yes, still good old bootsplash; plymouth caused problems during my tests)
• finally updated ZenLive manual addressing the changes introduced by switching to Slackware-live-scripts (don't expect a detailed guide, but the essentials are covered )

What is new in version 7.0:

• Zenwalk Live 7.0 is based on the sophisticated Slackware-Live-Scripts,
• being the first distribution using the brand new and not yet
• official released version 0.3.3
• Zenwalk Live consists of standard Zenwalk ISO packages following the main
• Zenwalk release with the latest XFCE desktop and applications
• and is shipped with a new artwork theme, additional localization
• packages for icecat/icedove and the nvidia proprietary driver.
• It also comes with full support for inputing and displaying Japanese.
• You'll get the latest stable version software incl. the most recent
• patches and bugfixes that have been released until now.
• It comes equipped with a "live" kernel patched to support aufs2,
• lzma compressed squashfs 4.0, bfs-scheduler and bootsplash.
• With ZenLive 7.0 the "persistent changes" feature is back.
• Also with this release local hard disc drives can now be mounted as
• normal user whitout the need of suing to root.
• It's possible to install the running Live-system to the hard disc drive
• or even transfer the live-CD into a bootable USB stick by using the
• included installer scripts.
• Supported boot parameters for ZenLive 7.0 are:
• - copy2ram=yes (to copy live-environment into the RAM and run from there)
• - exclude=MODULE_NAME.lzm (to exclude a non optional module from beeing
• loaded)
• - home=PATH_TO_STORAGE (to store persistent changes onto a local drive or
• file)
• - include=nvidia-new-driver.lzm (to load optional nvidia-driver module)
• - keymap=xx (to use this keyboard layout)
• - locale=xx.UTF-8 (to use this language)
• - rootpw=PASSWORD (to set individual root password and enabling root
• access)
• - runlevel=x (to boot into Runlevel x instead of standard RL4 with Xorg)
• - sli=yes|no (to have the installer script available/unavailable during
• the live session)
• - useswap=yes|no (to enable or disable the usage of local swap
• partition/file if found on the system)

What is new in version 6.4:

• Livekernel with aufs and squashfs3.4 inc. lzma compression
• Scripts and tools that are needed for creating and running the live environment
• ash
• a few localizations for icecat/icedove
• the sazanami-fonts and uim + anthy as input method to support Japanese language display/input
• a unique custom theme for bootsplash and GDM

What is new in version 6.0:

• Faster boot (tuned init scripts, with realtime I/O scheduler)
• New Control Panel with integrated Disk Manager, Wifi and Wired Network Manager
• Gksu keyring based desktop granting system
• PAM authentication has been added to the system
• New Netpkg with orphan dependencies and "offline operation" support
• The powerful Exaile music jukebox has been added
• Gthumb has replaced Gqview and Gtkam for viewing images and importing them from your camera
• The Lightning PIM extension for Icedove is installed by default
• New artwork