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.
Opera 9.6 Quick Review
Yesterday I downloaded Opera 9.6 for my ZenWalk linux at the first day release. It’s interesting because in the past I have to wait for 1-2 days before the tar ball is ready for my linux distro. Can’t wait any longer, I installed it on my machine. My first impression was there were seem no improvement at all, unless the Opera scroll marker.
Then I took a look at its email client, I was surprised because there were 5000+ messages in the trash! I read some messages randomly and found that the messages were the orphaned mail, messages that lost in the past due to Opera crash.
In the previous version of Opera, I have my mail crashed a few times and I have to create new email account and lost my downloaded messages. Then I see them there, inside the trash. So I quickly empty the trash, Opera run faster than before. Great!
Now I feel that this is the most stable Opera release for Linux. And I love it so! 
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.