Ceci est une ancienne révision du document !
Several years ago, netbooks were all the rage. I got my Dell Inspiron Mini 10 (1012) at the height of the netbook boom. For two days I tried to use the Windows 7 Starter Edition that came with the netbook, but, after removing all the junkware and making a backup to an external DVD burner, I still found the netbook extremely slow. I gave Windows a shot, it didn’t work out, so I tried Ubuntu 10.04 from USB, and the experience was magical. Not only was Ubuntu 10.04 significantly faster, it came with software I actually use. It was an easy decision to erase Windows 7 and install Ubuntu.
I already had a notebook, so I found myself not really using the netbook. The small keyboard made it somewhat difficult to type (long fingers), and looking down isn’t great for the neck. So I decided to put the netbook to another use: it became our family media center after I added a remote control, receiver, a couple of drives attached via USB and XBMC (formerly known as XBox Media Center). It served that purpose for a couple of years until I recently replaced it with a desktop machine. As much as I don’t like craning my neck down to look at the netbook, I’d been missing it at the local Ubuntu hour meetings I hold each month. My notebook is a bit big for the cramped desk space where we have the meetings (the desk is usually covered with food).
Initially I tried Ubuntu 12.10 on the netbook. Ubuntu ran on it, but just barely. Performance was as bad as, if not worse than, Windows 7 Starter Edition. I could have tried Xubuntu or Lubuntu, both of which run lighter than Ubuntu 12.10, but a friend suggested I give Crunchbang a try.
Crunchbang is Debian-based so it shares some of the roots of Ubuntu. Installing it to USB key wasn’t as simple as other Ubuntu-based distributions I’ve installed. Normally, I use the usb-creator-gtk application to install distributions to a USB key, but Crunchbang kept failing at the bootloader install stage. I ended up unmounting the USB key, running mkfs.vfat to format the key, pulling it out and installing using unetbootin. The Inspiron Mini 10 uses a 64-bit Atom processor so I installed the 64-bit version of Crunchbang.
Once I figured out how to get Crunchbang to the USB key, the rest of the installation was very similar to a graphical Ubuntu install. Crunchbang uses the Openbox window manager, so it’s very lightweight. The initial installation installs a handful of desktop programs: Abiword, Gnumeric, Gimp, VLC, XFBurn, gFTP, Transmission and XChat are among the more common programs.
To keep things lean and mean, Crunchbang doesn’t include LibreOffice, but installing LibreOffice is one of the options of the firstboot program that loads in a terminal when Crunchbang boots for the first time. The firstboot program asks if you want to update the system, install development packages, install OpenSSH server, install a LAMP (Linux Apache MySQL PHP) stack, and install LibreOffice. Though it seems very developer-oriented, I still like Crunchbang for the speed.
One of the Openbox claims is that it’s infinitely configurable. This does appear to be true, but configuration isn’t quite as easy as the days when Gnome 2 was actively developed. Part of the Openbox configuration can be found in Settings > Openbox > GUI Config Tool the other part in Settings > User Interface Settings. If you want to set the background you need to use a third menu option Settings > Choose Wallpaper, and, if you want your own wallpaper, you’ll need to click the Preferences button in Nitrogen’s (the wallpaper program) UI to add the path to the wallpapers you want to add. I suppose this could be following the UNIX philosophy – one tool doing one thing really well, but a single tool to do all three activities would be nice for new Linux users. I found Nitrogen to be buggy; it seemed to forget the path added the next time I launched it. The path remained in the preferences, but the images didn’t show in the Nitrogen wallpaper selection. Looking through the various Settings, you’ll see there are a large number of configuration options, almost all of which require knowing the format of some configuration file. While the configuration files are well documented (and somewhat obvious), it might be a bit much for someone new to Linux.
Many of the hot keys that work in Gnome 2, such as Ctrl+Alt+arrow to switch workspaces, work in the Openbox window manager. When Crunchbang first loads, it also loads a Conky file that shows some common hotkeys to do things like launch VLC, control volume, open the Geany text editor, or launch the run dialog. The super key (Windows key) based programs are generally commonly used programs like the web browser, a terminal, VLC, and text editor, in addition to Logout and a couple of menus.
From the perspective of someone who doesn’t mind editing a .config file, I really like Crunchbang. Crunchbang is fast, the super hotkeys make doing the most common tasks easy, it’s based on Debian, and everything worked out of the box for me after the install (including the wireless).
I’m not quite sure Crunchbang will appeal to everyone, but, if you don’t mind doing a bit of editing, and love your system fast, Crunchbang might just be for you.
P.S. if you like conky, the .conkyrc I’m using can be found here: http://charlesmccolm.com/2011/07/10/conky-modded-for-my-notebook/