With a great drum roll and a write up on Distrowatch Zen Linux has burst onto the Linux scene.  If for no other reason than I like the look of the desktop I decided I needed to have a look, screenshots here.
Zen starts as a bootable live CD which is rapidly becoming a common way to send out distros, one which I very much like.  You simply put the CD in and start you computer up and off you go.  It does all the work, and after a few minutes you are auto logged into your desktop.  I chose the KDE version as I have been using mostly KDE of late but there is a Gnome version as well as a "Core" version as well, the core version being the smallest at 314 Mb.  What you get:  kernel 2.6.9-5, KDE 3.3.2, Firebird, K-mail, K-office, K3b, Gaim, Mplayer, on X-free 4.3.0.  The Gnome version switches Abiword for K-office, and includes Epiphany as an additional browser.  The Core version uses Fluxbox, and appears to have no office suite installed by default.  Installing to your hard drive is almost scary, the developer calls the installer "rudimentary" and that it is.  You open a command line and type "zen -install dev=auto" or "zen -install dev=/dev/hda" if you wish to specify a drive. This is made more challenging by the fact that Zen did not address my hard drives outside of the /dev folder, nothing in /mnt or in /media.  You have no choices outside of this, it simply asks if you want to do this and than goes to work.  There is no indication of anything happening outside of the drives working like mad.  According to the web site, the installer simply copies the CD onto the selected drive.  It did work without any issues, but I cannot imagine one with little or no Linux experience being willing to try the install.  That done, a reboot and I am in my shiny new desktop.  Again it auto logs you in as the user entitled "Zen" with a password of "Zen".  The auto config did do it's job fairly well, of note however, is the limitations it put on my monitor, I am configured with a barely above flickering 61 refresh rate, and have no simply options to adjust it, with other distros I can go up to 85 with no problems.  I realize that this is likely a simple edit to the Xfree config file and is not a problem to the experienced user, but it is worthy of note. Zen is based on Debian unstable, which is a very solid up to date database to work with. There is an extraordinary amount of applications available via apt-get.  The gui apt-get included is K-package which works well but is not my favorite.  Overall, I usually use the command line to get what I want with apt based distos, it just seems to work better.  I was quickly able to update the distro with only a few packages being out of date, and than install the few additional packages that I prefer such as Thunderbird for e-mail. Configurations are done through KDE's control center which allows for access to nearly anything you would need to change with the possible exception to changing the monitor.  I was easily able to configure everything to my liking adjusting and tweaking as I went along. 
The long and the short of it is Zen pretty much works as advertised, which is to say it works quite well.  I have had no stability issues despite being based out of the unstable debian directory, what didn't come with the distro (Thunderbird, The Gimp, and Gftp to be exact) I have installed with ease having no issues along the way.  I really does work very well.  I look forward to the development of a user friendly installer like Mepis or PCLOS, once that has been achieved I will highly recommend Zen Linux to both the causal and the power Linux user.  Until than, I can only recommend it to the experienced user who is not afraid of the command line and knows his or her computer well enough not to destroy any data they wish to keep.

      In resonse Mr Medeiros's comments below about my monitor configure I have checked         out the most current version of Zen Core, which I can say did do a much better job of             setting up my video.  It was able to put me at a much higher resolution, with out any flicker or issues of any kind.  I am most pleased!
Keep up the good work!

Comments Received from Raymond Medeiros Zen Linux Developer:
Reprinted with permission.

"I just read your review, it's very informative.  It's true
unfortunately the installer is quite rudimentary, however i'm just
completing testing on the new installer library.  This will become the
back-end for all future installer applications for Zen Linux.
Essentially, it will start out with the familiar hash style CLI
interface (ie. -option argument=value) and will also have an
interactive mode.  This will at then graduate into a GUI installer.
Originally I wasn't going to release Zen Linux to the public, but so
many people who had done testing for me liked it that they encouraged
me to release it.  It's original intent was for use in a class i was
going to be teaching on secure coding practices.  However I am happy
it's gotten a warm reception.
I know you had some troubles with your video, I'd recommend you try
the latest 1.0.5 Core
and see if you have better results, the video detection is quite
pleasing now.  I think you will be quite happy when the 1.1 release is
available as alot of very nice additions beyond what you've already
experienced have been added."

./rm

My response:

"Thank you for your reply!

This is one of the things I love about Linux, having a real dialog with
the developer of a distro!
Would you mind if I posted your comments with the review?  I am very
glad to hear that the installer is being
enhanced, I love the live discs and really thing Zen Linux has a place
in the mix, a solid easy to use installer would cement that."

Raymonds Response:

"Yes that's fine.  I agree, like I said I hadn't expected it to be so
popular, but i am glad people have found some use for it.  I have
gotten alot of support from the community as far as QA and
recommendations goes, so we're shaping up to have a very solid
release.  Of course more things will simply work out of box.  I'm
looking into a few things that I'll leave as a surprise for 1.1, and of
course tons of bug fixes.  If you thought it was stable before, it's
going to blow your mind when you see what i have in the works now."

SWEET!

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