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.

Comments

Crunchbang is pretty decent

[Nimey]

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.

PiBang

[Erbo]

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.