Interview with Jean-Philippe Guillemin, Zenwalk's creator (OneOpenSource)
I started the Zenwalk project (formerly Minislack) as a way to learn the internals of GNU-Linux. Building an operating system is a great way to understand IT deeply because you're on your own to solve the problems when things don't work as expected.
In my opinion Slackware is the best Linux "Distribution" in the world (a "Distribution" is a collection of applications and GNU tools, compiled on top of the Linux kernel and the Glibc). Slackware is fast, reliable, secure, up to date, and built with respect for the Unix spirit. Thanks to Patrick Volkerding, the Slackware founder and maintainer, for his hard work.
Zenwalk is not really designed to be a "GNU Linux Distribution", rather a "GNU-Linux Operating System". When you install Zenwalk, you immediately get one application for each task, optimized and ready to use, along with a refined look and feel. The pre-selected packages are carefully chosen by Zenwalk developers to provide the user with only the best and most usable applications.