release announcement:This release includes both numerous software and visual advancements.
Key software improvements include XFCE-4.3.99.1, the Linux
kernel-2.6.17.11 Firefox-1.5.0.6, Thunderbird-1.5.0.5, Xarchiver-0.4 as
well as many others all updated to the latest releases (around 200
packages updated or added).
Visual aspects of the desktop have
been improved by using a complete Tango icon set as well as new custom
wallpapers and themes leading to the most uniform graphical desktop
ever. All applications from system tools to text editors and media
players look as though they were made for each other as a unified
operating system (including the Mozilla suite).
When it comes to
installation of the system, the Zenwalk setup wizard is, as usual, a
graphical ncurses based menu. The user does not have to type any Linux
command to complete the few installation steps, and the installation
wizard will detect any hardware device including video cards,
networking devices, sound cards, usb peripherals and much more, leading
to a completely functional system, ready to perform any task.
Many
subsystems have been improved, for example the udev based automount
system now have the ability to detect media insertions (CD/DVD...) via
uwd, the Udev Watchdog Daemon : a Zenwalk specific development.
Software
suspend to disk is now ready to use out of the box : making the
computer hibernate is simply achieved by hitting a keyboard shortcut.
Zenwalk
features a modern package management system with a graphical user
interface called netpkg. Netpkg is extremly flexible, fast, includes
dependency tracking and can be used to search packages from multiple
repositories that you can choose from the graphical GTK2 menu or from
CLI menus depending on the runlevel you are in. All system tools react
like this : GTK2 when X is running, ncurses when not in X.
An
important aspect of Zenwalk is the expanding community surrounding the
distribution. The community supporting Zenwalk has expanded into the
following websites:
1. TuxGames.net: TuxGames offers a wide
variety of video games ranging from First Person Shooters to Children's
and educational games. You will find all of your classic video game
favorites as well as the most modern bleeding edge titles there. See
http://www.tuxgames.net/ for more details.
2.
ZenCommunity: This is a friendly and open user based software community
where users can actively participate in building, testing and
supporting software with the goal of creating the largest software
repository on earth. See
http://users.zenwalk.org/ for more details.
3.
ZenLive: The Zenwalk Live CD project . ZenLive's releases closely
follow new Zenwalk releases and showcase Zenwalk prior to hard drive
installation. See
http://www.zenlive.tuxfamily.org/ for more details.
4. Fred.org: If you are an artist, you have a blast creating and submitting digital artwork with our main art site:
http://f-r-e-d.org/ and in the artwork section of our forums.
