To me, Zenwalk seems like Slackware, only the software choices off the bat are removed, and with a simpler installer. Zenwalk does things the 'slack' way, just like slack, it distributes files in .tgz format, just like slack, it has a package manager that you can get in regular slack, basically, it's just regular Slack prepackaged with set programs. It's easy to set up, sure, but so's Slackware (to me). Same with maintaining it. Zenwalk also has some nice tools, which I'll give it credit for, but I don't personally use them myself. I ran Zen on my old machine, and even though it was lean and mean, it felt kind of...dull. I also disagree with some of the packages that come with it by default. I mean, really, the only CLI text editor is vim, which is hardly a good application for new users. Plus, there isn't always 100% package compatibility with Slack packages in Zenwalk (very rare!). My experiences with Zenwalk sum up into a short and sweet poem of just a few words: "why not vanilla slack?".
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