crunchbang It is a lightweight distribution that seeks to offer a modern, versatile, and minimalist environment, without sacrificing performance. It is very customizable and adaptable for various purposes. One of its main characteristics is that everything works "Out Of The Box"This is achieved thanks to the integrated codecs to play Flash content, MP3, DVD's and practically any multimedia format. It is fully compatible with Debian, although it also has its own repositories in which the custom packages of this distro are kept (such as scripts, artwork and some applications not available in the repos of Debian).
On May 1, the first trial version of Crunchbang Linux 11 was released with the codename "Waldorf", based on Debian Wheezy, with Openbox as the window manager.
This distro appeared in 2008 (originally derived from Ubuntu until its tenth version, on which Debian Squeeze was based), is highly stable, despite what it clarifies on the official page corenominal (Philip Newborough), creator of this distro and the only one in charge of maintaining it: “CrunchBang Linux can make your computer CRUNCH! BANG! For that reason it comes ABSOLUTELY WITHOUT GUARANTEES ”.
Although it may sound a little alarmist, there is nothing to worry about .
The most important changes of this version with respect to the current stable version (that is, 10 "Statler") are the following:
- Based on the Testing branch of Debian.
- Kernel 3.2.0-2
- The default browser is Chromium 18 replacing Iceweasel.
- PulseAudio is added to manage audio.
- Slim replaces GDM.
- Compton (an application developed by a Crunchbang user) replaces xcompmgr and Cairo Composite Manager for managing desktop effects.
- VLC 2.0 as the default media player.
- Hot-corners are added: that is, the launch of pre-configured applications when moving the cursor to a corner of the screen.
Download.
We download the ISO image of the Official Site, where they offer us Crunchbang 10 (32 and 64 bits) stable with the Kernel 2.6.32, and the stable version + backports with the Kernel 3.2.0 (with the possibility of downloading them through direct download or torrents). And they also invite us to try version 11 "Waldorf" 32 and 64 bits, which is the one used in this case (64 bits).
Installation.
One detail that can get annoying is that it does not allow installation from Live mode, so once we test the system, if we like it and want to install it, we will have to restart and select the option to install Crunchbang in the menu from the Live CD.
The installation of the system went smoothly, the Crunchbang graphical installer is simple and functional (not very different from Debian but more limited), it brings the necessary options to configure the system correctly, and gives us the option of using the system LVM (Logical Volume Manager) at the moment of partitioning the disk.
On the machines I used to test it, it took 15-30 minutes to complete the installation, but this will depend on the hardware each one owns.
First steps.
When starting for the first time, Crunchbang will execute a welcome script that will help us adjust the system to our needs. First it will ask us to update the system (what if or if it requires an Internet connection); and then gives us the possibility to install Java, Libre Office (although by default it has installed Abiword y Gnumeric which for some people are more than enough), and support for printers through CUPS. It will also offer us to install a set of development tools, and everything necessary to have an environment LAMP, that is: Linux, Apache (web server), MySQL (database manager) and Perl, PHP, and Python as programming languages.
By not bringing all this installed by default (and since not everyone needs it), the ISO image is kept in a size possible to record on a CD, while allowing a lightweight system while maintaining the minimalist philosophy that characterizes to this distro.
My desktop after tweaking it a bit ...
Conclusion.
crunchbang is a highly recommended distro for anyone looking for good performance on their PC, as well as anyone who likes to get their hands on their PC and configure it to their liking. It is very fast, its resource consumption is ridiculously low (which does not mean it lacks functionality) and being based on Debian it has a very high stability. Further, open box it's great, once you get used to using it you don't change it for anything.
Right now I am writing from Crunchbang 11 - 64 bit, installed on my notebook (it was fixed as my daily use system: D), and I have absolutely no complaints.
Despite being a first test version, it is very stable, but if this does not convince you, I recommend that you try version 10 “Statler” whose last update was on February 07th.
Sources:
Download link (Testing): http://crunchbang.org/download/testing
Official website: http://crunchbanglinux.org/
Wiki: http://crunchbanglinux.org/wiki/start
Wikipedia: http://www.wikipedia.org/