Struggling with Zenwalk 5.2

When I used Zenwalk before, I don't remember having the problems I'm seeing this time around.
The problems I have are two: one is package management and the other is my so-far fruitless attempts to install Compiz-Fusion.
The package manager Netpkg seems quite temperamental and this article agrees with me on this. Two things I find confusing is how to get the available packages to actually show up. It seems that sometimes they do and sometimes they don't irrespective of what filters you may have chosen.
The other thing I don't understand is how Netpkg deals with repos and mirrors. The article I mentioned above says that all the mirrors are the same but my experience is different. However, as it seems only one mirror can be "active" at a time, then it seems to find some app you need to fish around in the various mirrors until you find it. I really cannot believe this is true and certainly wasn't the case when I used ZW 4.8.
With these problems had with Netpkg, I was glad to see there is an alternative Zendo which can be installed from Netpkg although here, again, I had to hunt around through various mirrors until it eventually popped up.
Zendo looks more like Synaptic and might be easier to get used to. Nevertheless, I'm still unclear how it handles repos and mirrors -- does it just use one active repo at a time? How do I know which repo(s) are active?
Very puzzling. I'll maybe post to the ZW forums about this.
I tried compiz from here. First problem is again linked to the first in that, when the wiki says

These packages can easily be downloaded from Slackware repositories using Zendo

(ie the packages necessary for the Compiz install, again I had to hunt around in a whole range of repos/mirrors before I found what I needed and indeed I didn't find them all.
Another thing was that both Compiz and Emerald in Zendo showed huge amounts of un-available dependencies. But I went ahead anyway.
However, Compiz just doesn't work. Indeed, I end up with the borderless windows without the buttons.
Maybe I need to post to the ZW forum on this as well.
I did at least get the nVidia 3d graphics driver (96.43.07) installed and this went without a hitch.