Zenwalk Openbox

Zenwalk Openbox is an open source operating system derived from Slackware Linux and built around the Openbox window manager. It is a special edition of the well-known Zenwalk Linux distribution geared towards slow computers.

It’s distributed as a dual-arch installable-only ISO image

The good news is that the distribution is freely available for download as a dual-arch ISO image that supports both 32-bit (x86) and 64-bit (x86_64) computers. The bad news is that it’s an installable-only ISO image, which means that you can try the operating system before installing it.

You can pass extra parameters to the kernel

From the boot prompt, it is possible to pass extra kernel parameters to the kernel in case you have hardware issues when trying to install the operating systems. Press the F2 key on your keyboard to access a complete list of boot options.

It must be installed prior to usage

Just like any other Zenwalk edition, the Openbox flavor must be installed prior to usage. The entire installation process is text based and will require you to select a keyboard map, partition the disk, as well as to set up target partitions and install packages, as well as to install the bootloader.

New users can use the AUTOINSTALL option on the Zenwalk Setup dialog to let the installer automatically partition the disk and install the distribution on a dedicated disk. Make sure that the disk doesn't contain important information, as it will be permanently lost.

Openbox seams ultra fast on old machines

As mentioned, the main goal of Zenwalk Openbox is to transform computers with old and semi-old hardware components into reliable, fast and stable machines. Because of this, it uses the lightweight Openbox window manager as the default and only desktop environment. It is comprised of a top panel and a bottom dock (application launcher).

Contains only low on resources applications

Trying to keep things as lightweight as possible, the distribution contains only low on resources applications, such as the Totem video player, gThumb image viewer, GIMP image editor, Mozilla Thunderbird email and news client, Mozilla Firefox web browser, Pidgin multi-protocol instant messenger, Transmission torrent downloaded, AbiWord word processor, Gnumeric spreadsheet editor and gFTP file transfer client.