First off, a bit about my linux use and the hardware used in this review. I've been using various linux distros since about '97. A few of years ago, I finally found happiness with Ubuntu Warty and have been an almost religious advocate of that distro for newbies and pros alike.
Lately however, a few portables without much power have come into my posession, and while Ubuntu may be a wonderful distro as far as user friendliness is concerned, no one is calling it lightweight.
My first thought was to stick Xubuntu on and be done with it. But upon closer inspection of my thought process, I realized that that would just be cheating. Sure XFCE is lighter than Gnome and just as usable, but the underlaying system would still be the same and the temptation to "apt-get install ubuntu-desktop" would be to great for my fragile little mind to handle.
So I figure I'd attempt using a lightweight, speed optimized distribution based on Slackware (speedy in and of itself). That basically meant choosing between Zenwalk and Vector. Since Vector is KDE based, and the only QT application I use is Skype, the choice was made for me.
The computer I've been testing on is a Dell Latitude X300. Basically a Pentium Mobile 1.2 (Banias) with 640 MB of DDR. A bit underpowered, but thin and light enough to make it worth it.
On a final note. The way I decided to test it is.... to USE it. Use it as my only machine for a month. And be productive during this period. That means no wasting time getting everything 100% perfect if it can't be easily obtained by an average user.
A bit about zen computing
Zenwalk is a GNU/Linux operating system, designed to provide the following characteristics:
Modern and user-friendly (latest stable software, selected applications) Fast (optimized for performance capabilities) Rational (one mainstream application for each task) Complete (full development/desktop/multimedia environment) Evolutionary (simple network package management tool - netpkg)
That's the sell point (possibly not the best choice of words on my part since this is free software) on the www.zenwalk.org website. I think they've managed to cover most of these aspects. The only one that's still not optimal is the "evolutionary package management tool" since apt-get remains package management nirvana IMHO.
Since lightweight is the key word in this case, here are the system requirements for the Standard 5.2 (latest at time of writing, released 2008/6/7) cd that I used:
Pentium 3 class processor
128 MB of RAM
2 GB Hard disk
Considering the 2.6.25.4 kernel XFCE 4.4.2 on top of Xorg 7.3 these are lean specs.
The install
Unlike most distributions these days, Zenwalk doesn't come with a livecd install as standard (though a Live version is available). In stead it uses a text based install, and while that is staying true to it's Slackware herritage, I still wish it would have taken a hint from Slax's (another Slackware alternative) book and offered both livecd and install on the same disk.
To be fair, the text based installed is viewed in a graphical way, it is very efficient in actually installing and the pdf manual on the site, though a bit outdated, does a great job of guiding you through.
http://manual.zenwalk.org/
Still, text based installers have a tendency to scare the socks off users new to linux and/or Slackware. In the end it comes down to personal preference, and I didn't mind that much.
One other thing worth mentioning about the installer is that the default filesystem it selects during the partitioning process is XFS and it uses LILO as a bootloader.
During the initial setup, you will be asked if you agree to the ipw2100 2200 licenses and the Adobe Flash License. If you agree you get both pre-installed, which I thought was a nice touch.Post install
After the installation has completed, I'm happy to say that I was left with a 90% functional system. Since I am testing this on a laptop the first things I tested were power management support, and I'm happy to report that both suspend and hibernate work perfectly. The things that did not work were bluetooth and wifi adapters as well as the volume keys.
The wifi adapter is a Dell Truemobile one, that uses the bcm4306 chipset. The wiki offered clear instructions about how to fix the issue both natively and with ndiswrapper.
http://wiki.zenwalk.org/index.php?title=Broadcom_bcm43xx_native
Instructions that didn't work unfortunately. Or didn't work completely, I should say, since the b43legacy and (especially) ssb modules still get loaded causing the system to see the card but not be able to do anything with it. After following the instructions on the wiki, an easy and lazy fix was to edit the /etc/rc.d/rc.wireless script and add the following instructions to the top of it (right after the comments):
rmmod bcm43xx
rmmod ssb
modprobe bcm43xx
To keep the b43legacy module from loading you simply have to blacklist it. Just add the following line to the end of the /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist file
blacklist b43legacy
Do a reboot of the system and you should be good to go. This has worked for me on most distributions with a kernel newer than 2.6.22. It's apparently caused by incompatibility with the ssb module.
The bluetooth is still unresolved (for me) for the moment. After a bit of investigating I found that no bluetooth packages are installed by default. This is a good thing in my opinion, since it isn't something that the majority of people have, and it would be going against the Slackware grain to install something "just in case".
Conclusion of part 1
After the installation and bcm43xx tweak you get a system that's nearly perfect. The only complains I have so far are that some programs are not set up to integrate well. For example Pidgin, the default IM client is set up to use the console-beep for sound. That doesn't work on most systems, in my experience, so you have to go into the sound preferences and switch it to "command" "aplay %s". Honestly, I don't see the average user figuring that out easily. That being said. These little blemishes should not put you off. If you're looking for a distro with speed as a main goal, a decent set of apps pre-installed you really should give Zenwalk a try.
One last thing worth mentioning is the look of the distribution. XFCE was always a good looking window manager IMHO, however the Zenwalk team have done a great job of integrating a great theme with a great desktop with a beautiful login manager theme with a LILO theme and bootsplash. The attention to detail they've showed is simply amazing. I have to say that this is one of the best looking distributions out there (or maybe I just like blue that much :P).
2 comments:
> I still wish it would have taken a hint from Slax's (another Slackware alternative) book and offered both livecd and install on the same disk.
SLAX is not meant to be installed. A few installers do exist, but SLAX's creator has publically said that he doesn't recommend installing SLAX.
> So I figure I'd attempt using a lightweight, speed optimized distribution based on Slackware (speedy in and of itself). That basically meant choosing between Zenwalk and Vector. Since Vector is KDE based, and the only QT application I use is Skype, the choice was made for me.
Vector actually has four versions:
Deluxe uses KDE and can be bought from their store
SOHO uses KDE and can be downloaded for free
Standard uses Xfce and can be downloaded for free
Light uses JWM/Fluxbox/LXDE and can be downloaded for free
See http://vectorlinux.com/products
I didn't realize that vector had expanded. Thanks! Guess it's time to give it another try.
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