R.I.P Crunchbang

crunch bang rip

The following is the translation from the post What did Philip Newborough aka corenominal, developer of Crunchbang, did today

I have decided to stop developing Crunchbang. It has not been an easy decision and I have been putting it off for months. It's hard to leave something you love.

When I first started working on Crunchbang, the Linux landscape was a very different place and while I honestly didn't know if there was value in it, I knew there was a place for CrunchBang on my own systems. And it turned out, there also seemed to be a demand for it on other people's systems. I'm not entirely sure why that was the case, but if I had to guess I'd say it was probably due to a lack of competition / alternatives of the same kind. If I remember correctly, at that time, there was no LXDE taskel on Debian and no Lubuntu either. CrunchBang filled a gap and that was great.

So what changed?

For anyone who was involved with Linux for the last 10 years or so, you will surely agree that things have changed. Although some things have remained exactly the same, others have changed beyond recognition. It's called progress, and for most, progress is good. That being said, when progress happens, some things are left behind, and for me, CrunchBang is something I need to leave behind. I leave it behind because I honestly believe that it no longer contains any value, and although I might hold onto it for sentimental reasons, I don't think it would be in the best interest of its users, who would benefit from using a vanilla Debian.

Speaking to users, thank you, you have been great and taught me a ton, much of which is beyond the scope of this post, but needless to say, I think I am now much wiser than before the existence of CrunchBang and its user community. I made a lot of friends during the project, which for me, have basically been the biggest benefit of the project, and something for which I will always be grateful.

I also want to take a word to thank my wife, Becky, aka bobobex. She supported me and the project from the beginning. Over the years, I'm sure I bored her to death with my geeky chatter and she never complained, well, at least not with me. Seriously, thank you Becky for your support, help and guidance, you are my rock and I love you.

On what happened to the CrunchBang forums, they will continue online. Basically, they belong to the community and so it will be the community that decides what will happen to them. I am happy to continue supporting you as long as it is needed. I already expressed my gratitude to the moderators, privately, but I would like to do so publicly as well. Unless they were involved with a project like CrunchBang, I'm not sure they can fully appreciate the behind-the-scenes work out there. The forum moderators have effectively kept the community running and without them, there would surely be no community at all. Over the years, they've had to deal with some crazy and poisonous people (seriously, there are crazy people with too much time on their hands) and they have done it with enormous tact, diplomacy, and decorum. All the moderators have my utmost respect, they are amazing people.

As for me, I am deeply saddened to abandon a project that in various ways defined my existence for so many years, but also excited to see what will happen. I have a few small projects that I want to work on, and I also have a day job that I want to excel at. It will be interesting to see what the future brings.

See you

Upgrade: #! not dead. Thanks to Percaff_TI99 for the news. The community will take care of crunchbang.

http://crunchbangplusplus.org/


44 comments, leave yours

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  1.   elav said

    RIP #!

    1.    tincho said

      elav I read the posts you made about Antergos. Excellent indeed.

      This is the time for you to make an impressive post showing how to configure everything they need in Antergos + Openbox to get to have a distro where Crunchbang users do not miss it (except for hyper Debian fans).

      1.    Ivan Barra said

        Almost impossible, from my point of view, the Debianites are the most Taliban for their stuff ...

        LOL!!

        (Just kidding in case the flies !!)

  2.   Ivan Barra said

    Another tremendous project that falls into limbo.

    Two options:

    1. you definitely die.
    2. another group of programmers take it and fork it (another one).

    Sad, really, the community was very good, although reaching #! not difficult, given its Debian (Devuan) base.

    Greetings.

    1.    Cristian said

      I propose to at least rescue the openbox + tint2 configurations in a theme package, because objectively it is the best of # !, having a well configured openbox without playing hours in the configuration was priceless.

      1.    Ivan Barra said

        How much does my favorite moderator know !! LOL!

        Anyway you do not stop being right….

      2.    joaco said

        If you don't want to configure it, there are other desktops that do not need configuration.

      3.    Roberto Mejia said

        support the nosion would be a good package that would save setup time and would be a good desktop environment for low-resource teams

      4.    ivan74 said

        #! It has many good things, the base despite being debian is highly optimized, of many light and fast distros this is in my opinion the best, because it is really very fast on any pc and it has few functions, nor is it lacking like them passes to other light distros.

  3.   nixie pro said

    This is sad news for the Linux world and especially for us, the users of this great distro. Nothing to say, more than THANKS FOR SO MUCH AND FORGIVENESS FOR SO LITTLE, PAPANOMINAL!
    Cheers crunchbangers!

  4.   Wisp said

    The saddest day since I passed away. Goodbye #!

    1.    diazepam said

      But if you didn't pass… wait, what are you doing on that cliff?

      1.    Wisp said

        Too late. The good news is that he was already dead.

    2.    eliotime3000 said

      You are not fooling me. They invoked you through the ouija.

  5.   cooper15 said

    I made a few blog posts, borrowing various ideas and scripts from # !; it really is a pity that such an interesting distribution disappears 🙁

    1.    Ivan Barra said

      Photo, Link or Fake !!

        1.    Ivan Barra said

          I was just looking at OpenBox desktops on the internet and it's really amazing what can be achieved with a little patience and good taste. There are several screens with which to gape and say OSOM !!

  6.   santiago said

    Too bad, it's my favorite distribution, it gave you an openbox and a completely ready stable debian, with everything very well optimized, plus I was looking forward to Jessie being stable to test the new version of crunchbang. A shame and I hope they keep it alive, even if it's like a fork but I'm very sorry to see such a good distribution die 🙁

    1.    Ivan Barra said

      And it will be possible to "transform" it into a Debian SID or similar from the repos and continue with the desktop,

      Or is what I am saying very silly?

      Greetings.

      1.    from said

        there is a distro very similar to crunchbang but with debian sid repos, it is called semplice linux

  7.   brutal said

    Die a big distro! a great shame.
    3.2.1…. will we have a fork? I think so

  8.   Fernando Gonzalez said

    Noooooooooooooooooooo !!! it was one of my favorite distros 🙁: '(
    what bad news really.

  9.   clow_eriol said

    It is a thought that this great project dies….
    #! 4ever

  10.   diukx said

    Too bad, I used this distro for almost three years and knew it from top to bottom. One of the best of its kind.
    Let's hope interesting projects like this keep appearing.
    Rest in peace.

  11.   Tesla said

    The truth, an absolute shame ... Although I have never used it directly, I have virtualized it for testing. I wanted to try the new version based on Debian 8. I think it contributes a lot to users who are among the advanced who want to configure everything and those who install and forget to configure anything. Crunchbang gives you that configuration where the base works perfectly and you can expand to where you want, if you wish.

    A real shame, but hey, time will tell… As far as I'm concerned I'm optimistic and I think the Crunchbang community will take care of it. It is a good distribution that is very clear about its objective.

    1.    eliotime3000 said

      It is possible that the community will relive it, since Crunchbang is a distribution born from Debian with an interface that is more than intuitive. It is because of that interface that I applied the Greybird theme to the XFCE environment of Debian Jessie and Wheezy, so the distro interested me that I even put the search engine page that used Google as a search engine as the home page in Opera Blink.

      On the other hand, #! it has the best custom desktop I've seen so far.

  12.   ivan74 said

    NOOOOOOOOO !!!!!!!!!!! It can't be, no no, I'm in love with this distro, it's beastly, I think it's great, I never found anything that would make it competitive, it can't be, I don't believe it, I just hope there's a fork or whatever but that it never stops developing this great distro.
    This distro was the second I tried (surely they all start with ubutnu) and I'm still as in love as the first day, all the PCs in my house run # !, even my RPi core Pibang, I don't believe it has to be a joke. In fact, a friend gave me a badge because he knew I love it.
    Sincerely, someone take up the project or fork.

    1.    Wisp said

      The fork is the next step, Crunchbang is so stable and we already know Waldorf so well that updating it to Jessie and modifying some scripts would not be that difficult, we will fork at least until Debian 9 comes out.

  13.   sergio said

    What a pity! Just that I had just finished installing it with dual-boot!
    But well it is!

  14.   robertx said

    I am a debianist who uses Crunchbang, and very happy with this distro…. =)
    When I found out about the decision of the project leader, Philip Newborough, I felt the same as when I lost my two hard drives and my backups…: .. (

    # kill -me now: .. (

  15.   porter said

    I am also a fan of CrunchBang, it seemed to me one of the great distros based on Debian not to mention that it was very good for old computers since Openbox consumes very little, and we know that there are distros that will not start on some pcs if they go with others desktops by default and not a simple window manager like Openbox. There is an alternative that is gobang -http: //gobanglinux.org/ is the same as crunchbang with many scripts and to the use of tint config, conky manager etc, but it is based on Ubuntu and not on pure Debian.

  16.   let's use linux said

    A great distro… we will miss it. 🙁

  17.   coon said

    Thank you!!!
    For the inspiration!
    For the ideas!
    For your work!
    Foreverything!

  18.   shamaru said

    This news has left me shocked, with a bad taste.
    Anyone who recommends something like Crunchbang for my comfort, please recommend it.
    «Looking for a new Distro»

    1.    shattered said

      The partner above, portaro, has quoted this distro:
      -http: //gobanglinux.org/
      I have taken a look at the web and the truth is that it has a very #! Touch, although according to the colleague it is based on Ubuntu, I do not think anything is noticeable in performance.

    2.    drink_n_drive said

      I recommend ArchBang (inspired by #!), With all the effort involved. But it is very elegant, and several of the artists and developers are easy to find on the CrunchBang forum.

  19.   Alex and such said

    Bye, #!

  20.   Ivan Barra said

    It is completely feasible, since if you use Ubuntu Core, it does not have to be heavy, what makes Ubuntu heavy is Unity, plus all the additions that it brings, such as the "lens", another advantage of using Ubuntu is the newest package , the downside is updating every 6 months unless you use an LTS.

    But I think that despite the updates, it does not hurt before doing it, create a disk image and proceed, if it fails, restores and voila, Ubuntu is known for its "hot" update problems.

    Greetings.

    1.    Israel said

      Hello, I already tried GobangOS, and although it is good, it does not reach the heels of # It is more complicated to get it ready and for it to take the Spanish language, it costs it, in addition to being based on Ubuntu 12.04, which in the Linux world means that it is way behind.

  21.   Percaff_TI99 said

    #! is not dead.

    Crunchbang seems to be reborn as CrunchBang ++

    http://crunchbangplusplus.org/

    1.    diazepam said

      Added as an update. Thank you.

  22.   coon said

    hello everybody !!!
    explanation
    GoBang is based on the stable version of Ubuntu.
    GBL -12.04 1.04 32bit «simple»
    languages ​​«English, Polish, Portuguese, Spanish»
    GBL 2.04 -14.04 32 / 64bit «pure»
    Language versions of the «English»
    GBL - the first version was created for a group of students. The inspiration was CrunchBang.
    Subsequent versions were created for the needs of people who are interested in the development of this project.
    More about the project and iso images here

    http://gobangos.sourceforge.net/

  23.   drink_n_drive said

    The only distribution that survived on my computer for more than 3 years (in a row, and counting). I know that now the community is working on Bunsen Labs, and that in fact I am sure it will be as or almost as good a project as CrunchBang, but I fell in love with the forum (one of the best places on the internet, as many say visitors), and above all, with the name. Gone is the classiest distro I've ever known, and my only operating system to date.