I've used Crunchbang Linux ('#!' to its friends) for the last several months as the secondary Linux distro on my Aspire AS1410. It's simple and elegant, although its default settings tend towards dark themes -- if #! had a favorite color, it be black. The distro is built on the base provided by Ubuntu 9.04, but replaces Gnome with the lightweight and flexible Openbox environment and a different selection of default applications and utilities. The standard edition weighs in at 673MB for the 64bit version, with the more spartan light version coming in at 436MB. Hardcore users can take advantage of an alternative installation method, which uses a custom script to install the #! elements on top of a Ubuntu 9.04 MinimalCD image. The distribution's home site cheerfully warns users that #! is not intended for any user who requires a stable, production system. After several months of using it, though, I can proudly report that all but a very few problems I had with the OS were self-inflicted. Left to its own devices, I found #! stable. The installer for Crunchbang is drawn directly from Ubuntu, and is easy to use. Once installed, the system was usable out of the box on my AS1410, which has an Intel Core Solo SU3500 CPU, Intel GMA4500 integrated graphics, 2GB RAM, and Intel 5100 802.11a/b/g/n wireless. As shown above, the OS runs easily on this system. RAM use when idling was under 100MB, with no swap, used a shade under 2GB of disk space, and averaged under 10% CPU load. With Firefox, Abiword, three graphics viewer windows and an instance of PCMan file manager open, RAM use was 237MB, with around 7% CPU usage. This is a good distro for older or lower-spec hardware. The joy -- or curse, depending on your aptitude and level of Linux-fu -- of Openbox and #! is they're flexible and configurable. How easy it is to configure them depends on what you're looking to do and your software savvy, since the "Preferences" tab on the system menu yields a mix of GUI and text-based options. I consider myself an advanced beginner, and found this an excellent "training wheels" distribution to tinker with from the command line or configuration file. #! is likely not a good choice for most beginners or users unused to the ins and outs of Linux. Unfortunately, I blew up my MBR in an ill-advised adventure into the Windows installer on my multi-boot computer, so the images in this review are of a fresh installation with largely default settings.Crunchbang's standard edition is well-provisioned with applications and utilities, although they've been changed significantly from the base Ubuntu Gnome choices. Defaults include Firefox, Skype, Claws Mail, Abiword, Gnumeric, GIMP, Inkscape, VLC, Rhythmbox, Audacity, Cheese, a plethora of terminal apps (Midnight Commander, anyone?) , Xfburn, five different text editors, Evince, and the standard utilities. No games come with the basic distribution, but the threat of Aisle Riot withdrawal was easily remedied by a trip to the familiar Synaptic package manager. Synaptic helpfully comes preset with a wide variety of helpful repositories. Openbox's menus do not automatically update to reflect new programs, but there is a reasonable GUI-based utility for editing them. Visually, #! comes out of the box (or down the broadband connection, as it were) set to project a dark and twisty persona -- sort of the geek-goes-gothic of Linux distros. I initially found this a little confusing, since I was used to lighter-colored themes where unresponsive windows greyed out -- as you can see from the screenshot of Synaptic, in Crunchbang it's not hard to make them all some shade of grey. I tend to prefer XFCE distros, so the jump to Openbox wasn't a long one. As shown above on the left, everything you need is a right-click away. From my point of view, usability was very high. One downside is that it is also easier for an inexperienced user to hose up their system in #! than it would be on a more beginner-oriented distro. One strong aspect of the #! distro is its online community, which is multinational but with a British flavor. The distro's site, www.crunchbanglinux.org is visually a bit spartan, but hosts a lively forum, useful and well-done wiki, Planet Crunchbang (blogs), and a link to #!'s Cafepress store. The forum is moderated with a friendly but firm hand, is extremely helpful and welcoming of new members, and has very little snark or flaming. The distribution is the brainchild of Philip Newborough ("Corenominal", a UK-based software tinkerer. Corenominal participates actively in forum discussions, and the overall vibe is remarkably civil. Experimentation is strongly encouraged, and there is active sharing of tips, successes, failures, and new art. To sum up, Crunchbang is a fabulous distro for an intermediate-or-above Linux user. The CLI-phobic should not apply, nor those afraid to edit a config file. #! is not my main distribution, mainly because I use it to play with, discover and experiment. (Not Crunchbang's fault, but I've learned the hard way over time to keep things I depend on having around safely on another partition, if not on a completely different machine.) It is a good fit for users with a good technical abilities or newbies with the curiosity (and occasional intestinal fortitude) to explore the possibilities it offers, and who don't need or want to do everything through a GUI. It stands as another great example of what a small but inspired group can do in the OSS world.
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