Zenwalk 6.0 RC, with Open Office
Zenwalk has announced their release candidate for Zenwalk 6, a big leap from previous version, 5.2.
Zenwalk 6.0 will be packaged with XFCE 4.6, kernel 2.6.28.7 and Open Office. I think Open Office is the main reason why the ISO is multiplied in size. The ISO size for previous version was + 400mb and now it is + 700mb!
I don’t like Open Office and I don’t use office application very often, so I’m gonna remove it away and replaced with Abi Word and Gnumeric Spreadsheet. Two other applications that would be removed are Iceweasel and Icedove. I will replace them with Opera, my favourite browser that already has mail client and RSS reader, very cool.
Now I can’t wait to download and install stable release of Zenwalk 6.0, please hurry! 
How to make Zenwalk Linux more compact
I’m a daily user of Zenwalk Linux and love it very much for the simplicity and their philosophy of one application for one task. The ISO is only 400+ megabytes and only require 2gb of harddrive space for full installation. And hey, it run fast on Pentium 3 machine.
But I found my own way to make this linux become smaller than before. Everytime I finished installing this linux on my machines, I always remove IceDove, IceWeasel, Transmission (BitTorrent client) and GnView.
As replacement for IceDove, IceWeasel and Transmission I installed Opera browser. This free browser is not only a web browser. It’s an email client, IRC client, BitTorrent client and also feed reader. Very great.
The last, I replaced GnView with GPicView. It’s simpler and faster.
Shell Script: Opera Auto Backup
I’m using Opera 9.5 on my machine with Zenwalk Linux for the operating system. Sometimes an error is occuring on Zenwalk when I compiling source code etc and I have to force shutdown my machine. If it happens when Opera is performing connection to mail server or checking for RSS updates, big chance that there will be a crash and destroy all my mail account and RSS feeds.
So I wrote a simple shell script to perform backup Opera’s files everytime I start my machine. I save this file as opera-backup.sh.
#!/bin/sh
SOURCE="/home/sandal/.opera"
TARGET="/home/sandal/.backup"
FILE=`date +%Y-%m-%d-%H-%M`
tar cfzP $TARGET/$FILE.tgz $SOURCE;
Then I add this shell script into Autostarted Applications (XFCE Menu – Settings – Autostarted Applications) so everytime I start my machine it will backup my Opera files. Whenever Opera crashes again, I can simply restore it from backup.
And by the way, Opera has released Opera Mobile 9.5 Beta, currently for Windows Mobile version.
