Crunchbang Linux 9.04: A review

Because of a wifi issue that I wasn’t able to resolve using Arch, I have returned to using my standby distro — Crunchbang. I had installed v. 8.10 over the weekend, but last night I noticed that the 9.04 release was available for download, so I did, and decided to back up my data and do a clean install, using the new ext4 file system. Oh how I miss the rolling release model of Arch!

A couple of things I noticed right away are the new, more attractive login screen, and a noticeably quicker boot time. Although it was no slouch with 8.10 (probably about 30 seconds), it seems even faster here, maybe on par with the 20 second boot time I was getting with Arch.

Actually, everything seems faster: app launches, file access, file copying, etc. I would imagine this is the result of using ext4 rather than ext3, amongst general speed improvements.

With this release, Crunchbang uses tint2 for its dock, rather than the lxpanel in the previous version. This is my first time using tint2, and I like it so far, probably more so than the lxpanel. I have only briefly looked at the configuration file, to add ’seconds’ to my clock, but it looks plenty configurable. A plus!

Also new is the addition of Transmission, rather than Deluge, for a BitTorrent client. I prefer Transmission, so this is another plus. Although I don’t have much experience using it, the Vim text editor has also been added to this release, along with an interesting full-screen editor called PyRoom. I’ll have to play around with that and see what I think.

Other big news is the addition of a 64-bit version, for those with better hardware than I.

One thing that I’m really glad that works this round, is the ability to retain my wired internet configuration at work. While wireless was not a problem, #! would not remember my wired configuration at work, so I’d have to re-enter it each time I connected. Now, it saves and works just fine after reboot.

Additionally, from the Crunchbang website:

Many other minor tweaks and fixes including:

• Improved documentation added to default configuration files.
• Openbox menu items added for commonly used configuration files.
• New and improved default Openbox and GTK themes.
• Additional Openbox and GTK+ themes installed, including the popular Dyne themes.

This looks like a solid release for Crunchbang, and I look forward to using it for my day-to-day computing. With all of the distro-hopping I do, I always end up coming back to Crunchbang, as it does what I want it to do, fast, with a minimum of hassles or getting in my way, and it looks good while doing it! If you like Ubuntu, but hate the bloat, give it a try! Like Linux Mint, you get all of the multimedia codecs from go, but unlike either of those, there’s no Gnome/Nautilus overhead.