Zenwalk is a Desktop focused Linux distribution founded by Jean-Philippe Guillemin. It is based on Slackware with very few modifications at system level making it 100% compatible with it.Zenwalk aims to be a modern and multi-purpose Linux distribution by focusing on Internet applications, multimedia and programming tools. Additionally, Zenwalk comes with many specialized tools, designed for beginner through advanced users as it offers system configuration via both graphical and command-line operations.

History
Zenwalk was originally called Minislack up to version 1.1, taking its current name with version 1.2 released 2005-08-12. Originally using KDE as its desktop environment, Zenwalk now uses Xfce as of version 0.3, although GNOME and KDE packages have always been available separately.

Aims
The Zenwalk Project aims to create a lightweight Linux distribution (through using only one application per task on the release ISO image), optimization for a specific instruction set architecture to increase execution speed, and introduces a comprehensive package management system with dependency resolution.

Project versions
There are five main versions of Zenwalk:
- Zenwalk Standard is a distribution aimed at mainstream desktop and development use. Designed to be a stand-alone operating system, it installs to the hard drive by way of a ncurses-based installer. It includes all of the officially released software packages that are deemed most useful by the Zenwalk community. The default install also includes development packages like gcc, and some proprietary media packages (such as Adobe Flash Player) and drivers in order to provide a full featured default install. The default desktop environment is Xfce.
- Zenwalk Core is a Zenwalk system built with customization in mind. Released with no X Window System binaries, its aim is to allow a skilled user to build a system fit for their needs. The project's lead developer is Emmanuel Bailleul.
- ZenLive (discontinued) is a Zenwalk system built on a Live CD design. ZenLive follows the progress made by the full Zenwalk system closely, thus mirroring the version number, and attempts to stay true to the original distribution's goals. In addition, it includes all of the necessary libraries and applications to develop and compile software, a particularly rare feature in Live CD distributions. The original ZenLive team left the project after version 6.0 was released but ZenwalkLive project has been revived by an enthusiastic user and is now developed as a one-man-project. Since version 6.4 the live-framework has been changed from deprecated linux-live-scripts to slackware-live-scripts.
- Zenwalk Gnome (discontinued) has GNOME as the default desktop environment.
- Zenwalk Openbox (discontinued) is supplied with Openbox as stand-alone window manager. It is a very lightweight version of the operating system. It does not follow LXDE in its choice of software. It still uses Thunar File Manager over PCManFM which is standard on LXDE-based systems such as Lubuntu.