Zenwalk 6.2 Makes the Switch to EXT4

The last week ended with the release of Zenwalk Linux 6.2, announced on Sunday by Jean-Philippe Guillemin. This fresh brew of Zenwalk will have a significantly smaller footprint on your bandwidth, because the new LZMA package compression takes the ISO size down to 490MB, while packing more applications and drivers than previous releases.

"Zenwalk 6.2 is mostly new code (nearly all packages have been updated), and the base system has been slightly modified (EXT4, kernel 2.6.30.5). The switch to LZMA for package compression has reduced the overall size of the ISO image (490MB) while allowing us to provide more applications and drivers." - Jean-Philippe Guillemin said in the official release announcement.

Among the other enhancements, Zenwalk 6.2 features the 2.6.30.5 Linux Kernel, it uses the EXT4 file system by default and XFCE 4.6.1 is the initial desktop. For an office suite, Zenwalk features an optimized version of OpenOffice 3.1.0 that boasts an improved speed, and it also provides better support for HP printers, since the drivers are now included by default. Netpkg, the distribution's package manager, received an overhaul to its user interface and it now features instant install with dependencies control and rollback support.

The Zenwalk installer is now easier to employ, since the user doesn't have to do hardware selection, instead the installer just requests confirmation for what it has automatically detected. Also, the installer will choose the appropriate kernel for one's computer, whether a sata, pata or scsi driver is used. Add that to the improved boot time and the growing software repository and you will see that Zenwalk 6.2 is a complete multimedia operating system or production environment.

Download Zenwalk 6.2 right now from Softpedia.