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CrunchBang offers a lightweight but powerful Linux desktop
On the functionality side of things, it's worth knowing that CrunchBang is built on Ubuntu. Finding additional applications and support is an easy task, thanks to Ubuntu's popularity and its enthusiastic community.
Instead of a bulkier window manager like Gnome or KDE, CrunchBang utilizes the more minimalist Openbox. Though Openbox is highly configurable and capable of the same kind of eye candy as other WMs, CrunchBang's default setup is lean and mean.
Those who, like me, are still getting their feet wet with Linux will appreciate the "cheat sheet" on the right side of the desktop. It contains a list of handy keyboard shortcuts to help you get started.
I always also glad to see that the sleep function on my notebook worked without a hitch in CrunchBang - which came as a bit of a surprise since it did not work in Ubuntu. Performing a hard drive install is a breeze and the boot time afterward clocked in at a respectable 35 seconds on my laptop. Once it's running, CrunchBang just gets out of the way and lets you get down to business with your applications.
CrunchBang is available in three varieties: standard, lite, and CrunchEee (customized for Asus Eee PC netbooks). If you're after a ready-to-use desktop, the standard version is for you. It includes many popular apps like Pidgin, Skype, AbiWord, Gnumeric, Gimp, and Deluge. You can, of course, add them to the lite version through Synaptic, apt-get, or GDebi.
Comments
5
Subscribe to commentsandresJan 25th 2009 8:55PM
I been using #! since the begining of the semester (about 3 weeks now,) when my hard drive on my laptop died, and like many other PhD students I aint got no cash for a new one, but I did have plenty of USB flash drives, so I been running it off my usb drive and I gots to say its amazingly quick. I didn't find it very user friendly because I was using sudo and the terminal way more then I ever have with ubuntu or any other distro to get it to my liking. its not going to replace ubuntu for me but its getting me through school flawlessly at the moment and its really quick even off my usb flash drive for example, it boots in 72 sec. and is performing better then when i ran ubuntu off the same usb drive
fannityJan 25th 2009 10:02PM
what if i run ubuntu already and want to install the crunchbag packages? is there an easy way to do this?
LukeJan 25th 2009 5:28PM
I've been using #! for a while now and i love it. that 'cheat sheet' as you call it is actually a program called Conky, and its amazing. you can use it to display all sorts of information about your system.
sitrucJan 25th 2009 9:58PM
"Those who, like me, are still getting their feet wet with Linux"
That explains your distrowatch post a few weeks ago. ;-P
votreJan 26th 2009 3:36PM
This is a great distro for when you want to squeeze a few more years of use out of otherwise useless hardware. I've got C-Bang installed on an old laptop. The CPU runs at 300mhz and it only has 384Mb RAM, but CrunchBang still runs incredibly quickly.
Much faster than Xubuntu or Zenwalk - yet still full featured. CrunchBang's a keeper.