DSL to Zenwalk and back to Xubuntu

March 15, 2007 by Chris · 2 Comments 

I had been running Damn Small Linux on my old Thinkpad for the last few months. It generally worked well, but I’ve had a few stumbling points with my somewhat goofy hard drive install of it. I never did manage to get sound going and I hadn’t really stumbled over a way to ensure that I was staying current. It was time for a change.

Zenwalk logo And really, that paragraph is a bit of a load. The real story is I like to experiment, and I had stumbled over a “new” linux distribution I wanted to try: Zenwalk.

Zenwalk is a GNU/Linux operating system, designed to provide the following characteristics :

  • Modern (latest stable software)
  • 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)

The screen shots looked sparkly and shiny too. How could I resist?

The install was easy enough. In general, it ran well enough. But… my old laptop struggled with it a bit. The built-in “pencil eraser” mouse worked great, but the USB mouse was a lot like mousing through syrup. Awful, really. I tried a post at the support forums, but got no love. My initial run at getting sound going didn’t go well (but really, does it ever on a Thinkpad?) After poking around a bit, I decided that if I was going to stick with the Xfce world, I’d go back to Xubuntu where I’m more comfy.

So I did. I haven’t got sound working yet… but maybe this weekend I’ll have time to try some more. Might be related to the fact that I’m running “pre-beta Fiesty Fawn” — which I’m really liking so far.

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