Crunchbang 10 Statler Review

March 28, 2010 by rich scadding Leave a Comment


Distrowatch: http://distrowatch.com/crunchbang
Homepage: http://crunchbanglinux.org
Wiki: http://crunchbanglinux.org/wiki
Forums: http://crunchbanglinux.org/forums
Download location: http://crunchbanglinux.org/downloads/statler/alpha-01/

|IT-0| Install/Live Test BOTH
Time to Boot/Install: 10 Minutes
The text based installer didn’t show up probably as I installed on a Sis based Laptop. I solved this by adding the vga=791 to the installer commandline:
http://crunchbanglinux.org/forums/topic/6853/fix-statler-alpha-text-installer-black-screen/

|N-5| Network (router/modem/wireless)
Wifi: See Notes
Nic: Eth0 connected with Network Manager and DHCP with no problem at all
Modem: N/A
As of yet, the Alpha does not have wireless tools or Broadcom drivers/firmware installed, so I just manually installed them and fired up wirless without a problem.

|U-0| USB periferals NOT TESTED
Periferals:
Problems?

|G-5| Graphics Card
Make and Model: Sis Graphics Card (No proprietary Linux Drivers/Firmware)
Always problems with this card on any Linux distro. The sisfb framebuffer has to be added to Grub:
http://crunchbanglinux.org/forums/topic/6854/fix-laptops-with-sis-graphic-cards-and-wrong-colour-depth/

|S-5| Speed+ DM
Desktop: OpenBox
Slow or Fast? Very fast !

|F-5| Forum Support
URL: http://crunchbanglinux.org/forums/

The Crunchbang forums and community in general are awesome. I mean really. The Crunchbang community is a mixed batch of experienced users and newbies all working together to make the best of their distro. User feedback and support is amazing, probably the best Linux distro forums I know (obviously I won’t comment on Dreamlinux Forums or LxH, bias etc Tongue ) Everybody gets involved with support, chat, scripts, apps. Whatsmore the head developer and forum Admin (corenominal) plays a very big part in the community, which is something that many other forums lack.

Points Guide
0. Didn’t Work
1. Unsatisfactory
2. Satisfactory
3. Good
4. Very Good
5. Excellent

General observations:
I spoke to omns and corenominal about putting together a FluxBang Fluxbox edition, but as soon as I installed the Crunchbang Debian OpenBox edition (I also have the Ubuntu version), I decided that there is nothing i can do with Fluxbox that would even come close to competing with (or offering anything new) to this already amazing distro.

This version has blown me away and rekindled my desire to distro-test and help support a distro. I tried OpenBox before, but as a Fluxbox fan, I always went back to Fluxbox (Dreamlinux and Tota). But Crunchbang has done something special with it, and I will be leaving it as it is.

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Crunchbang goes Debian – Statler Alpha1

March 20, 2010 by rich scadding Leave a Comment

I have just installed Crunchbang 10 Statler which is the first of Crunchbang’s move to Debian, Squeeze to be precise.
Here is the release announcement:
http://crunchbanglinux.org/forums/topic/6843/crunchbang-10-statler-alpha-1-released/

The first alpha of CrunchBang 10 “Statler” is now available. Download it at your own risk!

If you do decide to give it a try, please do not forget to provide feedback. Your comments and suggestions are really important to the future development of the project, so please warm-up your digits and get ready to type-up your notes.

For anyone who might be interested, I have written up some release notes on the wiki. Apologies about the lack of details, but this is a new start to the project and I am not sure I could reasonably detail every change.

P.S. Please do not break the new download servers. Captain Link Hogthrob, Dr. Julius Strangepork & First Mate Piggy are all new to the job, so take it easy on them!

I have always liked Crunchbang, but even though I do have Ubuntu installed on two of my computers, I just couldn’t get into it. And in my quest for a Debian based Window Manager run desktop, myself and the guys at LxH built Tota Linux

I have always been a Fluxbox freak, and basically end up Fluxbox-izing everything. I am currently working on the Tota Fluxbox Edition as well as building a Fluxbox desktop for the upcoming Dreamlinux 4.0.

I PM’d omns and corenominal about creating a FluxBang Community Edition, but after installing the latest Debian based Crunchbang Alpha I just fell in love with what has been done with OpenBox.
Therefore I decided to abandon all hope of doing anything with Fluxbox that hasn’t already been done with OpenBox:
http://crunchbanglinux.org/forums/topic/6850/fluxbang-idea-abandoned/

As soon as I had installed and had a good play with Crunchbang Statler I decided to write a Distro Test over at LxH, something that for a long time, no distro has given me any incentive to do:
http://linux-hardcore.com/index.php?topic=2706.0

So far so good, I am really enjoying the simplicity and speed. Whatsmore, as it is Debian and not Ubuntu, you also get a psychological impression of stability. I use Ubuntu and it’s good, but it always leaves you feeling scared that the next update or reboot will break something. Debian Squeeze did that to me a couple of times on Tota and also a Vanilla install but it was always due to third party apps or a small (fixable) bug.

Hopefully Crunchbang on Debian has started as it means to go on, because it is absolutely rockin’ at the moment.

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How to Mount Ubuntu Ext4 on Debian Ext3

March 15, 2010 by rich scadding 2 Comments

As Ext4 was experimental during the release of Lenny, it wasn’t fully implemented. However, you can mount an Ext4 file system on Ext3 with Debian Lenny, but only in “Read Only” mode.

As root
tune2fs -E test_fs /dev/XXX
mount -t ext4dev -o ro /dev/XXX /mnt/ZZZ

I had Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx and Windows 7 on two other partitions when I installed Lenny, I now have read access to Ubuntu’s Ext4 and read/write to Windows 7′s ntfs file system.

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