Slashdot Mirror
Debian + Openbox = CrunchBang Linux (Video)
"CrunchBang Linux is a Debian based distro with the Openbox window manager on top of it. So it is Debian under the hood with Openbox on the surface," says distro supporter Larry Cafiero. A glance through the #! (CrunchBang) forums showed an exceptionally fast response rate to problems posted there, so even if you haven't heard of #! (it's not in the DistroWatch Top 10), it has a strong and dedicated user community -- which is one of the major keys to success for any open source project. In order to learn more about #! Linux (and to share what he learned), Timothy Lord pointed his camcorder at Larry during LinuxFest Northwest and made this video record of their conversation.
Almost as much as Gentoo, though I'm fairly sure most of the Gentoo zealots are trolling.
I got an eeePC running that shit, so it must be good.
For a lightweight distro, it's pretty well thought-out and has some nice extras over a default Openbox install, plus the devs understand the concept of "discoverability" in that they have a list of keyboard shortcuts in the top-right by default. Unlike lighter distros, it's not crippled by being limited to whatever the devs and community can package up or you compile on your own (like, say, DSL or Puppy) since it's backed by the Debian archive.
This distro will work a treat for your old Pentium III laptop.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
There's also a distribution for the Raspberry Pi "inspired by" CrunchBang, called PiBang, which is based on the Raspbian distribution. I'll have to look at that one; the nature of the Pi makes it easy to switch distros by just changing out the SD card.
Be who you are...and be it in style!
I'd say it was definitely an isolated occurrence. I use Crunchbang on all of my machines, and have found the community surrounding the distro to be very friendly whenever I've popped into the forums. I was able to meet Phil and Becky Newborough at a barcamp a couple years ago as well, and they're one of the nicest couples you could have at the forefront of your distro. :)
"CrunchBang Linux is a Debian based distro with the Openbox window manager on top of it. So it is Debian under the hood with Openbox on the surface,"
So why should I install CrunchBang Linux instead of, say... I don't know ... Debian pure blend Wheezy with Openbox?
At least I (and DistroWatch) have heard of Debian.
It's a pretty good OS, I've ran in to a couple of problems here and there but overall it's really fast, customizable and openbox is pretty intuitive once you get the hang of it. I haven't been using it on my main laptop recently because battery life seems to be a little worse than Ubuntu.
I like this distro a lot. I use Xubuntu on my primary machine which is newish...and use Crunchbang 11[wheezy-based] on my older hardware. Crunchbang is stable and FAST! Love it for its simplicity and lean memory footprint[usually 150MB or so] and flexibility.
Thanks to the Crunchbang devs for a great distro.
How is does using a new WM make a different distro? If I take Fedora and replace the default shell with zsh, can I call it Gothmollix?
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Anything you can do with can be done equally well, usually better, with the unadulterated parent distro.
I checked the Crunchbang "about" page. Here's what it offers: a collection of unquantifiable claims, the same kernel and userland already available in Debian, and a dark theme.
Apparently it's "Infinitely hackable" and "Super nimble" blah blah blah. I'm surprised they didn't also claim "elegant" and "intuitive".
Better description: pointless.
I run this on an Asus eeePC 901 and it is the perfect lightweight setup for me.
I've been running Debian since about 1999... and I've been using Openbox since about... 2003? 2004? Does that mean that I was running #! before it existed?
"The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule." --H.L. Mencken
espeically anderson coopeer
The best forums I ever encountered were the Gentoo forums. The OS is a pain in the ass if you don't want to update every couple weeks but the amount of help, howto's and other stuff available on the Gentoo forums frankly blows away every other forum I've ever encountered. And though Gentoo has a bad reputation for RTFM in fact I found their forums to be beyond helpful to total newbies (though I wasn't a newbie).
I thought years ago that Debian + OpenBox == Knoppix?
Nothing, essentially; Crunchbang just augments the desktop side of Debian, and leaves the rest of it as-is. If you're using it headless, you're just using Debian.
cat /etc/debian_version && apt-cache show openbox
6.0.6
Package: openbox
Priority: optional
Section: x11
Installed-Size: 1508
Maintainer: Nico Golde
Architecture: amd64
Version: 3.4.11.1-1
Provides: x-session-manager, x-window-manager
Depends: libc6 (>= 2.2.5), libfontconfig1 (>= 2.8.0), libfreetype6 (>= 2.2.1), libglib2.0-0 (>= 2.24.0), libice6 (>= 1:1.0.0), libobparser21, libobrender21, libpango1.0-0 (>= 1.14.0), libsm6, libstartup-notification0 (>= 0.10), libx11-6 (>= 0), libxau6, libxext6 (>= 0), libxft2 (>> 2.1.1), libxinerama1, libxml2 (>= 2.7.4), libxrandr2 (>= 0), libxrender1, zlib1g (>= 1:1.1.4)
Recommends: openbox-themes
Suggests: obconf, menu, ttf-dejavu, python, libxml2-dev
Conflicts: menu ( 2.1.12)
Filename: pool/main/o/openbox/openbox_3.4.11.1-1_amd64.deb
Size: 332214
MD5sum: 198f49c7c3982dad42a066554b9da6d2
SHA1: 8c66233b574ca565fb655d9907235207b4c81f69
SHA256: 692525b483bdd4936b1c67a07bd27434d41ad72620bb48bcfc73735bb0ff01d7
Description: standards compliant, fast, light-weight, extensible window manager
Openbox works with your applications, and makes your desktop easier to manage.
This is because the approach to its development was the opposite of what seems
to be the general case for window managers. Openbox was written first to
comply with standards and to work properly. Only when that was in place did
the team turn to the visual interface.
.
Openbox is fully functional as a stand-alone working environment, or can be
used as a drop-in replacement for the default window manager in the GNOME or
KDE desktop environments.
.
Openbox 3 is a completely new breed of window manager. It is not based upon
any existing code base, although the visual appearance has been based upon
that of Blackbox. Openbox 2 was based on the Blackbox 0.65.0 codebase.
.
Some of the things to look for in Openbox are:
.
* ICCCM and EWMH compliance!
* Very fast
* Chainable key bindings
* Customizable mouse actions
* Window resistance
* Multi-head Xinerama support!
* Pipe menus
Homepage: http://www.openbox.org
Tag: implemented-in::c, interface::x11, role::program, scope::utility, uitoolkit::xlib, x11::window-manager
Install scripts, mostly dev stuff. Apache, mysql, postgres. There's a nice default gui. If there is another debian + openbox + web dev install scripts distro that I am unaware of, or if you've got your own custom debian image, then maybe this isn't that useful.
Probably if dpkg works for you, you aren't their target audience.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
There is no powerpc edition, so you would get less than nothing.
Doe the window manager have a taskbar-like control? It looks like one along the top on the website. If so, can you move it to any screen edge, or is it stuck there like Unity? I've been wanting to go back to Debian and play around, and this might be a very cool combo - but I gotta have my taskbar for one-click window switching.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
There is also a Crunchbang-inspired derivative for the Raspberry Pi, called PiBang. I find it much more pleasant than the gaudy Raspbian ...
Yeah, the bar at the top is the tint2 (https://code.google.com/p/tint2/) panel / taskbar. It's very configurable - the config options are well documented on their project page.
It's a shame their download page requires javascript. I never see any direct download links without JS.
Crunchbang admin, if you care about your users, post direct download links without requiring javascript! And not just torrent downloads, either!
Crunchbang is nice, it's the direction the TAILS Linux Distro should've gone, but instead TAILS uses the clunky and old Gnome 2.30.2 (11/12/2010) and an outdated Network Manager 0.8.1. Liberte Linux may use OpenBox, IIRC, but they've only released one version and it needs updating.
If you use Crunchbang, disable Conky so your TEMPEST loving friends can't keep track of your different computers with all of the information printed on the screen including I/O local and remote transfers and IPs.
So basically you could just install Debian, install openbox and pull down their configuration and you would end up with Crunchbang? I agree if it's that simple. Why not instead spend the effort on improving the experience with Debian? Is it really necessary to have a separate distribution just because of that?
Here you go: http://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/7.0.0/multi-arch/iso-cd/debian-7.0.0-amd64-i386-netinst.iso
I came across Crunchbang few days ago, when I noticed it on distrowatch front page. I needed something light so I've decided to try it.
It is seriously impressive. Install is very very simple and intuitive (and supports full-disk encryption in installer - fairly important for me), it is logical, desktop looks nice, it's fast.
It was one of those really nice surprises you don't expect :)
Since when. How on earth did # = crunch.
Shebang, Hashbang are widely accepted. but crunchbang?
I would think the usual order of things is BANG-> CRUNCH... :o)
"I love animals! Some are cute, others are tasty, what's not to like?" - Betsy Schroeder, Jeopardy contestant
The Crunchbang community in earlier days was a pleasant and welcoming mix of the technically knowledgeable and enthusiastic semi-noobs. In fairness, a few years later, it could be viewed as moving in the direction of a Fanbois Club, some parts friendly and some decidedly not. Recent unwelcome changes by new "moderators" have prompted a slow exodus of many.
http://hypercube.us/forum/index.php?topic=1345.0
I used CrunchBang for a brief period of time not too long ago, and while I didn't spend that much time on the forums, I have no complaints about my experience there. A needed to ask one question, I received an answer--no problem. I browsed around a bit and the community there seems nice.
This story strikes me as unusual. I don't see what the big deal is about Crunchbang. What have they done to deserve special mention in a Slashdot story, and really set themselves apart from the hundreds of other distros? I keep an eye open for light weight desktop environments. Currently use LXDE with Openbox, as that seems lighter than XFCE, but under Arch Linux, not Crunchbang.
As for forums, I have found the Arch forums to be a mixed bag. Mostly good stuff. But they have more than one rude elitist posting in there. Was having difficulty with an Arch distro for a Beagleboard computer, and posted about the problems I encountered.
One problem was a chicken and egg issue with putting a boot loader on the flash drive. They had not provided an x86 binary installer, so I tried various ways of installing it, including cross compiling the installer myself. It apparently compiled successfully, but it didn't work. The fact I was even messing with a Beagleboard ought to clue a person in that I'm no noob, but I was still told I was an idiot for wasting all that time with cross compiling. It was just supposed to magically work, and I was doing something wrong, he didn't know what, but he just knew it had to be something stupid. I suppose they deleted the thread because it embarrassed them, as when I went back for another look for what little helpful info it had, I found it was gone. Another time I asked why Arch had moved to systemd, questioning whether it was a good idea. I was told to STFU, the decision had already been made, and wasn't going to be unmade.
I'm moving away from Arch, mainly because of systemd, though the rude responses gave me an extra push. Haven't settled on another distro yet, and am using Lubuntu for now.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
I personally like that if I want pure Openbox and a standard set of options there's Debian, but if I want a more tweaked Openbox with tint2 and lots of other customizations I can choose CrunchBang. They both fulfill their unique, if semi-overlapping, purposes. I see no reason to CrunchBangify Debian and eliminate CrunchBang itself. If people would actually try it themselves instead of jumping to conclusions, they'd see that it's not exactly "just" Debian with Openbox. There is more to it than that.
While # ! is truly a great distro, it's not all Hearts & Flowers in the forums like the guy in the video says, try asking why only one usb drive will mount at a time, or why SD cards aren't recognized when a usb drive is present, or why they won't even mount, and you get back something like "well just enter the ID of the SD card and usb drive into the blah, blah, blah, and that's that".
Yeah, do that for my 22 + SD cards and usb drives just so I can use them like I can on every other OS on the planet except # !, sure, especially since nobody offered just HOW to do such a thing, great help, plenty of help, NOT.
It's 2013, all distros should mount SD cards and usb drive without any issues, and without cludging the OS.
You must have popped into #archlinux by accident :)
Seriously though, on the forums, the #! guys (and girls!) are some of the nicest in the Linux community.
Funny, I tried this one on my netbook a while ago.
It felt like a return to the early nineties.
bad.
This sure is not for everyone.
Do you want to edit every menu and config parameters as a text file ?
need to learn where is every one of those text files ?
and then learn the syntax of every said config file ?
The dimensions of thumbnails are as pertinent as the file size itself. The clutter-free look is very attractive in a world where every other forum has animated gif avatars, large colored signatures and superfluous use of !!!!
It is akin to how people post to mailing lists with the entire thread quoted. It's just bad netiquette.
if you don't like it quit whining and stfu.
I used CrunchBang for a brief period of time not too long ago, and while I didn't spend that much time on the forums, I have no complaints about my experience there. A needed to ask one question, I received an answer--no problem. I browsed around a bit and the community there seems nice.
I think your statistical methodology could do with peer review into its robustness and fitness-for-purpose.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
as a replacement for Ubuntu 10.04. I want to stick with debian because I get on with apt-get, but I don't want unity/kde/gnome3/cinnamon. Obviously the other alternative is linux mint mate.
D
What can I say? I had next to no problems with the distro, so I really didn't need to be very active in the community. I didn't see any major hints of elitist pricks posting while I was there. I can't say much, but what I can say is at least not negative.
I've watched the video and the explanation doesn't really make sense to me. What am I getting with CrunchBang that I'm not getting with Debian/Openbox? More apps added? So? They're not available in the repositories?
I've seen a lot of distributions that do these fairly minor tweaks and provide useful synergistic defaults to some subset of a distribution, and I've long wondered why they don't go the route of building a package set that can just be installed on the base distribution. I've read in these comments that the crunchbang installer is pretty damn close to installing debian with preseedable options, the line doesn't always make sense.