Review: Zenwalk GNU Linux Current-230909
I had planned to go into this experience with the Zenwalk rolling snapshot to take just a quick glance at the distribution, mostly to compare it to the 15.0 release. In particular, I was wondering if the bugs (such as the display issues and Samba service) had been addressed in the past year and a half.
At first, it looked promising. The video display issues I'd had with 15.0 were no longer there and the desktop session was responsive. The installer doesn't look as though it has changed, but it feels a little faster than before.
Beyond that point though, I mostly encountered disappointment. There are some minor issues such as the Samba service still not working out of the box and VirtualBox integration not being in place. The much larger issue (or issues) though are with the package manager. It doesn't work out of the box, requiring the user to manually select a mirror. Most distributions do this automatically - picking a nearby mirror or one at random. After that, the package log is broken fresh out of the box (a problem that existed 18 months ago too) and it is discouraging this hasn't been addressed.
The biggest problem, of course, is the package manager destroying the installation, apparently by wiping out the C library during an update. Completely rendering every application and command line program inoperable during the first update is a major problem and probably the worst error I've encountered in a package manager. This makes it impossible to keep a fresh copy of Zenwalk's Current branch updated and is a critical problem I hope is corrected quickly.