Crunchbang #!
I’m a bit of a distro hopper. Ever since I discovered Linux thanks to my best mate Craig and installed Ubuntu on my desktop pc I’ve been hopping from 1 flavour of Linux to another. In that time I’ve tried Ubuntu 8.04, 8.10, 9.04, 9.10 & 10.04 not always consecutively, Linux Mint, Crunchbang, Fedora twice and now back to Crunchbang.
Anyway I’ve settled on Crunchbang 10 otherwise known as Statler for the time being and I have to say on many levels it’s a really good fit for what I want in a distro. It’s lightweight. Meaning it doesn’t use a ton of ram just to run the wallpaper, taskbar, startmenu, icons etc. Being lightweight also means it’s fast or snappy. You don’t find yourself waiting after clicking an icon or menu entry for the program to start which is always nice.
I like the dark theme that is the default in all Crunchbang releases. It’s actually quite difficult I have found to create your own black theme and have all the little bits of it usable all the time. There will always be 1 program or menu that’s not coded according to some standard or another that is unusable requiring you to switch back to a lighter color at least till you’ve finished whatever it was you were doing at that time. With Crunchbang everything just works. I chuckle a bit as I write that because I’m sure it has taken Corenominal otherwise known as Philip Newborough the founder and sole maintainer of Crunchbang quite some time to get the theme and all the other parts of the system working together properly but isn’t that the mark of a good product? All the hours you pour into it culminate in a product that once shipped to the end user “Just Works!”
I should just mention especially if Philip should ever read this that Crunchbang comes with no warranty whatsoever and if you’re not comfortable with a system that could quite possibly go CRUNCH BANG! Then you shouldn’t use it at least not on a production / always on machine. You can read more on the Crunchbang About page
When I installed it I didn’t have to connect to the internet. With other distros I have tried very early on in the install process they are searching for a network connection as they have to download something or other during the install. With Crunchbang the install was fast, simple and painless. It was only once the install finished and I’d rebooted that I was asked if I wanted to go online to install other not included programs but again this was optional and could be run again later if that was more convenient.
Another point on how light Crunchbang is, the menu’s aren’t cluttered with program after program that I’ve never seen before and am never likely to use. Take the Multimedia section of the menu for example. There is a media player, VLC in this case which can handle all your media playback needs such as video, audio and streaming content live from the internet. There is an obligatory volume control and XFburn for burning CD’s & DVD’s. Awesome, 3 programs that basically cover any need that could arise. The only thing I added was a podcast client to keep track of all the podcasts I listen to each week and again they all play in VLC.
Finally I should point out that Crunchbang actually comes in two flavours or desktop variants. XFCE which is a great lightweight choice similar to Gnome & KDE in that it offers an integrated user experience whilst being lighter on cpu and ram requirements & OpenBox which is the option I’ve chosen. Openbox could be a whole other post in itself but suffice to say it’s a very lightweight desktop that allows you to control all aspects of how it looks, works and feels. If you want a panel or taskbar to the windows folk you have to choose which one you want and install it and configure it how you want it to run, same as wallpaper if you want to set a background then you need a program to do that for you.
This might seem like a lot of unnecessary work to some people but for those that are prepared to put the effort in they are rewarded with a system set up just for them and that works just the way they want it to.
I should point out that Crunchbang does come with a fully functioning desktop with a panel and wallpaper so don’t think if you install the Openbox version that you will be left with a blank screen.
The last thing I will mention is the level of detail that has been put into the menu. Sure it has the standard text editor, web browser and file manager but it also has links to all the documentation you’ll need to really get stuck in and learn what makes the different parts of your desktop tick. Plus it has links to the config files should you want to edit them. Sure we could find them ourselves but it’s a nice touch.
Before I waffle on anymore I think it’s time to finish this post
Hey Becker :)
Thank you for your kind words, I am really glad you are enjoying CrunchBang. As you probably know, I develop CrunchBang for myself, but I find it really interesting to read other people’s thoughts about the project and how it works for them; so, thank you for publishing yours. :)
Hang on just one sec while I check over my shoulder lol. I can’t believe how quickly you found and commented on my post. You must have been looking over my shoulder while I typed it. That was seriously less than 15 minutes from when it went online.
Anyway thank you for taking the time to read my post and for commenting on it. You do an incredible job delivering such a polished distro and I’m only to happy to spread the word.