Back with a CrunchBang #!

WHAT happened to the "p-y-e-o-w-w-w"?

I've lost count of the number of times the sci-fi blaster sound that CrunchBang Linux makes when it starts up has made me - or someone in the room with me - jump.

Now, it makes an equally sci-fi "boop-bleep-bup" sound which is nice, but doesn't have the same dramatic effect of making people duck if your speaker volume is maxed-out.

The laser bomb start-up sound came with version 8.10.01 of CrunchBang Linux which I'm still running on my main desktop PC, while the new triple-beep effect is in the latest version of this outstandingly good Linux distribution, version 9.04.01, which is based on Ubuntu 9.04 'Jaunty'.

I'm keeping my 8.10.01 installation as my main squeeze because it does absolutely everything I want/need a computer operating system to do; that, and the fact I've invested so much time getting the system and software set up just-so that I just can't face doing it all again.

Mind you, I came mighty close to biting the bullet and wiping it all away for 9.04.01 because it, too, is that good.

I skipped version 8.10.02 of this Ubuntu/Openbox-based distribution so I was interested to see what had changed since my first positive experiences with Corenominal's (aka Englishman Philip Newborough) baby.

From the release notes we find:

For the first time, CrunchBang Linux is available to download in both 32 and 64-bit builds. The addition of the 64-bit (amd64) builds were a major contributing factor to the delay of this release, although the end result was worth the extra development time. Other noticeable changes as a result of moving to the latest stable Ubuntu release include:

* Much improved boot performance with faster start-up times.
* Improved support for wireless cards.
* Ext4 filesystem support.

Other changes over the previous 8.10.02 release have been kept to a minimum, with the exception of:

* The lightweight tint2 panel/taskbar replaces lxpanel.
* Transmission BitTorrent client replaces Deluge.
* A full Vim installation included by default.
* Pyroom fullscreen editor included by default.
* Many other minor tweaks and fixes including:
o Improved documentation added to default configuration files.
o Openbox menu items added for commonly used configuration files.
o New and improved default Openbox and GTK themes.
o Additional Openbox and GTK+ themes installed, including the popular Dyne themes.

Let me look at a couple of those, starting with the boot time - I clocked it at a shade under 25 seconds from pressing the button to entering my name in the login screen, which is remarkably fast.

I'm using wired ethernet on my test PC, so I can't yet comment on 9.04.01's wireless performance, but I'm planning on replacing the 8.10.01 installation on my Dell Latitude X1 laptop, which has Intel/PRO wireless, so I'll report back later on that experiment.

Likewise the ext4 filesystem - I went with the tried and tested ext3 simply because it's what I've used for such a long time now that I'm comfortable with it.

Looking at a few of those minor changes, I prefer the lxpanel which came with the earlier release so I uninstalled tint2 and replaced it wil lxpanel from the massive Ubuntu repository using Synaptic.I'm guessing the panel switch was probably made after Corenominal saw the great interest in tint2 on the CrunchBang forums, but for me the lxpanel gets the job done better - it's purely a personal thing, there's nothing at all wrong with tint2.

Likewise with the default bit torrent Transmission, although in this case I left Transmission alone as I don't think there's much difference between it and the old offering, Deluge.

CrunchBang has always been one of the more minimalist, stripped-down looking Linux distros - version 9.04.01 is no exception, as you can see from the default desktop below - and to go with this there's now a whole Openbox menu section featuring terminal-based applications.These terminal-driven apps take some getting used to but I can imagine them being extremely useful if you're running CrunchBang on a very low-powered machine.

I normally make copious, detailed notes when I'm reviewing a Linux distribution, but in the case of CrunchBang I've so far filled just three pages of a small Moleskine reporter's notebook.

The reason for that is because everything has gone so smoothly. The installation uses Ubuntu's installer which is so good that, frankly, I'm bored with writing about it.

My wired broadband connection was automatically detected, as was my 1280x1024 screen resolution and onboard sound and, because Corenominal is English and so am I, he helpfully has the default keyboard and locale set to UK English too!

So what is filling those three Moleskine pages? Well, this one surprised me a little.

When reviewing I always do a series of multimedia-based tests - DVD movie (check, in vlc), music CD (check) and then Firefox and a variety of websites.BBC iPlayer played fine, as did YouTube videos, but I was surprised to find I couldn't play Apple movie trailers, which are in Quicktime format.

I normally get round this by installing Mplayer and its Mozilla plugin but this resulted in Firefox crashing every single time I clicked on a trailer.

This immediately struck me as odd because Mplayer's plugin has worked fine on pretty much every other distro I've ever used, including CrunchBang 8.10.01.

Anyway, I uninstalled Mplayer and tried the vlc Mozilla plugin (vlc is CrunchBang's default video application) but this failed to work.

My third attempt, with Totem and its plugin, worked fine. Puzzling, but at least I've now got the full multimedia setup I require.CrunchBang Linux may not be to everyone's tastes - the monochrome art style suits me but I can imagine some people finding it all a little bleak and unfriendly.

Likewise the Openbox window manager, in which you access your menu by right-clicking anywhere on your desktop, a way of working that's a long way removed from what Windows users in particular are used to.

Personally, I've grown to really love Openbox - it's so fast and stable and once you understand how it works, you'll not want to use anything else to manage your desktop.

Plus, CrunchBang includes a host of links in the Preferences menu to gui applications which make managing/tweaking Openbox simplicity itself.

There are also handy links to a variety of man pages, documentation and help files, plus the CrunchBang forum which remains one of the friendliest places on the internet.

I also like the overall choice of applications in CrunchBang - there are office, graphical and sound/vision programs to cover just about every task I can think of and they all do their jobs admirably well.

They may not be the big-name, market leaders in their fields - for example, Abiword and Gnumeric are here instead of OpenOffice - but they do what's needed of them and, in some cases, are a very pleasant surprise (WinFF, GPodder etc).
I'm an unashamedly huge fan of CrunchBang and my enthusiasm for it has not waned in the slightest since I first heard that laser bomb login.

In fact, while you're pushing me, I'll admit it's my favourite distro of all time.

Version 9.04.01 builds on the distribution's growing reputation, bringing the solidity and flexibility that Ubuntu offers and adding a dash of minimalist style and a low-resources environment that's just as at-home on old machines as it is on high-end beasts.

So, stop wasting time. Get CrunchBang 9.04.01 today.

CrunchBang downloads
CrunchBang forum

ADDENDUM

I just wanted to add a note about running CrunchBang 9.04.01 on my Dell Latitude X1 laptop; in particular, how ludicrously easy it now is to get my 3 mobile broadband dongle working.

It took me a couple of days to get around to putting 9.04.01 on the X1 and it's now working beautifully - it's really fast, given the lappy only has a modest 1.1GHz processor and 512MB RAM.

I just now started the X1 up with the 3 mobile broadband dongle in a USB slot (incidentally, it's a Huawei E220 dongle) and was greeted with a helper wizard which was simplicity itself - select your service provider, confirm the name for the service and connect.. it's that simple.

This kind of ease-of-use confirms my belief that once people see CrunchBang in action, they won't want to use anything else.