I tried Zenwalk back at v3.0 and liked it. It was a fast, sleek, minimalist OS based on Slackware, but supposedly only aimed at more technically advanced users. With the release of v5.0, I decided to try it again and see how far it's come in the past year or so.

For those who aren't familiar with Zenwalk, here's a brief update: Zenwalk is a one-CD installation of Slackware which has a philosophy of only including one program for each task. It was originally called MiniSlack in the pre-1.0 days when it shipped with WindowMaker as the desktop. Now, it's based on XFCE, supposedly has much better hardware detection, and is a more complete desktop overall. It's still based loosely on Slackware, using Slackware's packaging system and using LILO instead of GRUB as the boot loader, but it's a more complete OS out of the box, despite being smaller.

Installation
Of all the distributions to use a live/install hybrid CD, Zenwalk isn't one of them. The live CD is usually released a month or so after the main release, and so I found myself jumping straight to the install.

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