Zenwalk 6.4 Beta Is Ready for Testing

Jean-Philippe Guillemin has announced the availability of the latest Zenwalk 6.4 Beta bringing cutting-edge packages and improved performance. The Slackware-based distro continues its pursuit of efficiency and speed and boasts noticeable improvements in many areas. The emphasis on performance doesn’t come at the expense of the ease of use, as Zenwalk 6.4 Beta can be installed in a few minutes by simply selecting the default options during the install process.

"Zenwalk 6.4 BETA provides many enhancements at system and application levels. The brand new 2.6.33.1 kernel is featuring the new BFS scheduler, designed for the best desktop interactivity on multi-core CPUs while taking the most of lower spec machines. You'll notice better responsiveness of graphical applications, better realtime performance of sound applications (very low latency), and efficiency of niced commands (compilation tasks can really be niced in a way they don't disturb other applications). Like its predecessor, Zenwalk 6.4 features EXT4 as main filesystem, and latest versions of most applications and desktop environments," Jean-Philippe Guillemin, creator and main developer of Zenwalk, explained in the official announcement.

Highlights of Zenwalk 6.4 Beta:

· Linux kernel 2.6.33.1 - with the BFS scheduler;
· The XFCE desktop environment was updated to XFCE 4.6.1;
· Udev 151 - faster boot time;
· OpenOffice.org 3.2.0 - a performance optimized version;
· X.Org 7.5;
· Gstreamer 0.10.28;
· New artwork;
· Better internationalization;
· Most packages updated since the previous release.

Zenwalk 6.4 Beta doesn't sacrifice in the flexibility department either. The GNU/Linux operating system uses a modular approach to packaging allowing users to easily convert their install into something that caters exactly to their needs. The developers say Zenwalk could be the base for a multimedia studio, an office workstation, a gaming box, a development platform, and so on, but without installing anything that the user doesn't need.

Zenwalk 6.4 Beta is available for download here on Softpedia.