CrunchBang - Code, Design & GNU/Linux

27 Responses to “CrunchBang Linux 7.10.01 Release Notes”

1. mWm wrote, Tuesday, January 22nd, 2008

   Great achievement! I think I'm going to download just to check it out. Some stuff on the screenshots might be useful.

   Tnx.

   Keep up the good work.

2. Jon Reed wrote, Tuesday, January 22nd, 2008

   Excellent stuff, i'm definitely going to download it and try! I would also like to remaster an ubuntu installation to my taste, could you be so kind so as to explain me how did you did it? I'm no IT-illiterate, so jargon-me away if you please! :)

   Thanks, Jon

3. Tom wrote, Tuesday, January 22nd, 2008

   This sounds like a good idea for anyone who customizes things a lot. Do you have any instructions that one could follow to create their own images?

4. mWm wrote, Tuesday, January 22nd, 2008

   Downloading at 67Kb/s :rox: 68Mb done. I'll give some report after installation. Does it have a live preview :P ?

5. Philip wrote, Tuesday, January 22nd, 2008

   @mWm: Yes, it runs as a LiveCD with the option to install. Enjoy :)

   @Jon & Tom: As soon as I get time I'll post a howto.

6. mWm wrote, Tuesday, January 22nd, 2008

   Great! Waiting for the how to, too.

7. heri wrote, Tuesday, January 22nd, 2008

   Hello, I have downloaded and tried the livecd on my Toshiba Tecra 8200 PIII Laptop RAM 256 MB. Your distro is fantastic ! It's fast and loaded with useful applications, and the theme is beatiftul. Awaiting the tutorial on howto create your distro (pls make it a newbie-friendly howto :P ) All the best.

8. tallman wrote, Thursday, January 24th, 2008

   Nice :) Isn't pypanel buggy a bit? I also experimented a bit with remaking ubuntu.

9. sujoy wrote, Thursday, January 24th, 2008

   wow, great! thanks to heri for pointing it out and a lot of thanks to Philip for the wonderfull thing.

   looking forward for the how-to :)

10. Becky wrote, Friday, January 25th, 2008

    Your better half requests that you do as the nice poeple above ask, and create a "how-to". It's not like you've got anything else better to do this weekend :P

    Have I told you lately - you rock :)

11. Philip wrote, Friday, January 25th, 2008

    @Becky: Better half?! LOL :D Seriously though, hopefully I get something typed up this weekend. As you say, I've nothing better to do :P

12. mWm wrote, Saturday, January 26th, 2008

    I installed it on my notebook and it works great. Seems a bit lighter. It has some theme bugs under some applications but overall it's very cool. Can't wait to get that tutorial on how to build up a custom distro [at least under Ubuntu].

13. Philip wrote, Saturday, January 26th, 2008

    @mWm: Cool, thanks for trying it out. I've tried to minimise the amount of display/theme bugs and I've hacked the GTK theme file quite a bit. I guess some got through. If possible, could you email me with the details? Cheers.

14. IMQ wrote, Monday, January 28th, 2008

    Hi there!

    I am downloading CrunchBang as I type. I found out about this from reading DistroWatch.com Weekly this morning.

    Is Openbox similar to Fluxbox?

    I learned a little bit about Fluxbox when I was testing various Fluxbox-based distro. I am more familiar with KDE, GNOME, XFCE, so naturally when something different and interesting comes along, I am unable to resist to have a look.

    Anyway, CrunchBang looks quite interesting! :)

15. Philip wrote, Monday, January 28th, 2008

    @IMQ: Hi :) Yes Openbox is quite similar to Fluxbox. If you've used Fluxbox then you should feel right at home with Openbox. Both window managers have a main menu which is accessable via right-clicking the mouse. Also, both are somewhat lighter than KDE, GNOME and XFCE, and both are highly configurable.

    Glad to know that you're downloading it and going to give it a try, I hope you like it. Also, thanks for the note about DistroWatch.com — I'm not sure who submitted the distro, it wasn't me. I'm just hoping my host doesn't complain about the increased traffic! :D

16. IMQ wrote, Monday, January 28th, 2008

    Hi Philip,

    Well, I took CrunchBang for a spin on one of my PC. So my first impression:

    • The desktop is clean, just the way I prefer: no icons
    • The menu from right-clicking somewhere on the desktop is well put together. At least on basic app for each category: graphic, audio/video. office, internet, etc.
    • It felt speedy. Many of the apps open quickly! Almost like Damn Small Linux.
    • The dark theme is likeable. And I do like the Tango theme.
    • I also like the snapshot option of 5 seconds delay. Really cool.
    • Hey, it detected my D-Link DWL-G122 USB Wireless but I was unable to connect to my wireless router with WPA because the keyboard for the # sign (Shift+3) showed something different. I think it was because the keyboard condifured as UK instead of USA?! Is there a way to specify US keyboard at boot time?

    Since there are room on the CD, I would like to suggest adding a couple apps to an already well selected package list:

    • xchm or something similar for reading chm files. Lots of ebooks, even for Linux comes in this format.
    • VLC or Mplayer. Sometime VLC can play files that Totem can't

    Like others before me, it would be great if you can put together a how-to remaster. :)

    You have, IMHO, done a better job than Fluxbuntu in building a light-weight window manager based on Ubuntu.

    So, congratulations!

    PS: I have a couple older laptops that I think I will try CrunchBang out to see how thay work out. These machines are Pentinum 3, 450MHz-800MHz, with less than 320MB of RAM. They are useable but not speedy. Hopefully, CrunchBang runs faster than what I have now on them.

    [remove nospam- to email]

17. Philip wrote, Tuesday, January 29th, 2008

    @IMQ: Thanks for the feedback. In response:

    The desktop is clean, just the way I prefer: no icons

    I know this sounds trivial, but it really isn't, at least not for me; I've found that by removing the desktop items I'm more inclined to save my data in a more logical fashion. Previously under GNOME I used to save data to "temporary" directories on the desktop — I've lost count of the amount of data I've lost by doing this. Therefore, by default CrunchBang comes with no desktop icons or options for creating directories on the desktop.

    The menu from right-clicking somewhere on the desktop is well put together. At least on basic app for each category: graphic, audio/video. office, internet, etc.

    Thanks, I've included all the applications I use on a daily basis, plus a few more for good measure. I think most applications are covered.

    It felt speedy. Many of the apps open quickly! Almost like Damn Small Linux.

    When compared to GNOME and KDE, Openbox is fairly speedy, this is one of the main reasons I've adopted it as my WM of choice. However, I'm not sure it's quite as speedy as DSL :)

    The dark theme is likeable. And I do like the Tango theme.

    I like the dark theme, I find that it provides good contrast for working on Graphics etc. Having said that, it's proving to be quite problematic and I've received some feedback regarding issues with the theme under certain applications — VLC for example which has issues with the playlist manager.

    I also like the snapshot option of 5 seconds delay. Really cool.

    Helps with taking screenshots of menus etc. :)

    Hey, it detected my D-Link DWL-G122 USB Wireless but I was unable to connect to my wireless router with WPA because the keyboard for the # sign (Shift+3) showed something different. I think it was because the keyboard condifured as UK instead of USA?! Is there a way to specify US keyboard at boot time?

    Hmm, yes the keyboard is configured as UK by default. Looking around my current install it appears as if I have missed off the option for configuring the keyboard, Doh! I take it you're running under the LiveCD [?] the installer should provide the option to set the keyboard to your locale.

    Regarding the suggested additional packages, thanks I'll look into them. I know of VLC and agree that it would make a good addition. I'll look into xchm too.

    Thanks again for the feedback, it's appreciated!

18. IMQ wrote, Tuesday, January 29th, 2008

    Hi Philip,

    First of all, thanks for responding to my comments above.

    You were right that I was running in LiveCD mode.

    I resolved the keyboard issue by reconfiguring the xorg.conf file via:

    dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg

    Then I logged out, did the Ctrl+Alt+BackSpace for good measure, let the autologin did its job. BTW, nice simple login screen.

    I tried to configure the wireless again but it seemed the WPA was not supported with this driver. Just a note, I never get this USB Wireless to work under Linux, and I never tried without encryption. Unsafe was the reason. From what I could gather searching the various forums, the support for WPA is not available. Maybe someday.

    Back to CrunchBang, the dark theme is OK but I don't usually stick with it for more than a day or two. Too much contrast after a while, I think.

    Have a great day.

19. adam wrote, Tuesday, January 29th, 2008

    Just a quick line to let you know I'm thoroughly enjoying your initial remaster.

    I've been using archlinux for a while and have spent hours messing about with openbox to get it just right.

    Your release(it didn't knacker the old laptop by the way) gets me 3/4 of the way to what I was after and immediatly(after installing a couple of bits and bobs) I was able to watch Arsenal vs Newcastle with sound, even though the internal sound card is fried and I use a usb one……

    To sum up: CrunchBang spot on, the game: oh deary me

20. Stas Sushkov wrote, Wednesday, January 30th, 2008

    Great, I got you in my reader, on my desktop, and you got my respect! ;)

21. Sean wrote, Thursday, January 31st, 2008

    Philip — this is great! I've installed a copy and I'm loving it so far. I used to run Openbox on NetBSD and love how quick it is…thanks for the work you put into this.

22. Anton wrote, Saturday, February 2nd, 2008

    It's maybey a stupid question, but what is the username and password?

23. Philip wrote, Saturday, February 2nd, 2008

    @Anton: Hi. The username for the LiveCD is "crunchbang". There is no password. Why do you ask, are you experiencing problems?

24. Noisome wrote, Saturday, February 2nd, 2008

    Great work on this remaster. Many remasters are not very good, but this one is fast, sleek, and fully functional. Fantastic.

    I do make one suggestion however. It is to use Audacious for mp3, pls, and other audio files. Its a fairly minimal addition, but having it as the main audio player will solve many audio problems like streaming music (sky.fm for example).

    I don't believe this is a personal preference as totem is the ootb choice for streaming (pls) and it doesn't work ootb. Then choosing an .asx file will open another program, which does work, but its two different programs for a similar job when Audacious does both, and its familiar to most.

    Otherwise, fantastic job and works excellently on a Thinkpad X40, only requiring a standby fix and a docking station fix.

    Noisome

25. Chambel wrote, Friday, May 16th, 2008

    Hello Philip. What a great distro you have created, i love it. I've currently installed your distro and also the Gnome desktop. I need to know how to change the keyboard layout to Portuguese. It works on Gnome but not in Crunchbang. Regards, Chambel

26. Philip wrote, Friday, May 16th, 2008

    @Chambel: Hi and thank you for your kind words. Regarding the keyboard layout, you could try entering the follow terminal command:

    setxkbmap pt
    

    Hope this helps :)

27. Chambel wrote, Friday, May 16th, 2008

    I put the command in the autostart.sh and works great. You are the Man!