Debian + Openbox = CrunchBang Linux (Video)

[ka9yhd]

"CrunchBang Linux is a Debian based distro with the Openbox window manager on top of it. So it is Debian under the hood with Openbox on the surface," says distro supporter Larry Cafiero. A glance through the #! (CrunchBang) forums showed an exceptionally fast response rate to problems posted there, so even if you haven't heard of #! (it's not in the DistroWatch Top 10), it has a strong and dedicated user community -- which is one of the major keys to success for any open source project. In order to learn more about #! Linux (and to share what he learned), Timothy Lord pointed his camcorder at Larry during LinuxFest Northwest and made this video record of their conversation.

http://linux.slashdot.org/story/13/05/09/175211/debian--openbox--crunchbang-linux-video

[melodie]

Yes, Crunchbang has been out there for a long time now. You will notice if you give it a try that it is not exactly setup in a way which is meant to fit the needs of non tech users. Anything you want to change in it will need some learning which might be higher than most people expect from an OS. Unless it has changed a lot since last time I have tried it, but this I don't think.

[djohnston]

I like CrunchBang, except for one aspect. They use the compton composite manager. Compton is great, and looks pretty, when it works. Install compton on a Debian respin other than CrunchBang, then watch what happens if you start the VLC media player. Kills compton deader than a doornail, until it is restarted. Compton's developer's solution was to patch VLC, rather than fixing the problem in compton.

I've been experimenting with composite managers running with the RazorQt desktop. I've tried cairo, xcompmgr and compton. RazorQt just doesn't work as well with compositing as other desktops do, unless you use Kwin. And that would defeat the whole purpose of a "light desktop" because of all the dependencies it has, including some daemons.

The older xcompmgr is much better behaved than compton. Sad part is that compton is a "replacement" for xcompmgr.

[melodie]

Mel:

I still have CrunchBang on a spare drive complete with your updates to the openbox menu.  Although I have not used it for awhile.

We don't run for virus hunting, but we do for time to try and use all these distros. :o)

Don't we ?