about CrunchBang Linux

CrunchBang Linux (abbreviated #!) was a Linux distribution derived from Debian by Philip Newborough, who is better known by

hispseudonym corenominal.

CrunchBang was designed to use comparatively few system resources. Instead of a desktop environment it employed a customized implementation of the Openbox window manager. Many of its preinstalled applications used the GTK+ widget toolkit.

CrunchBang had its own software repository but drew the vast majority of packages from Debian's repositories.

Philip Newborough announced on 6 February 2015 that he officially stopped developing CrunchBang.

Editions

CrunchBang Linux currently provides an Openbox version for i686, i486 and amd64 architectures. Until October 2010 there also was a "Lite" version with a limited number of installed applications. This version was discontinued after the distribution on which it was based - Ubuntu 9.04 - was no longer supported.

CrunchBang 10, made available in February 2011, was the first CrunchBang version that was based on Debian. The current version, CrunchBang 11, was made available on 6 May 2013.

Each CrunchBang Linux release was given a version number as well as a code name, using a name of a Muppet Show character. The first letter of the code name also corresponded to the first letter of the upstream Debian release (previously Debian Squeezeand CrunchBang Statler and currently Debian Wheezy and CrunchBang Waldorf).

Reception

In May 2013 Jim Lynch of desktoplinuxreviews.com reviewed CrunchBang 11. He stated:

Frankly, it’s one of the most functional and efficient distros available today. You can run it on top of the line hardware, or you can run it on older, slower machines. It’s a perfect choice for anyone who prefers functionality over form....These days it seems that lots of distros and other operating systems are adding tons of glitz and glitter to desktop interfaces. CrunchBang 11 does the complete opposite. Frankly, it’s a breath of fresh air and I enjoyed it. It was fast, stable and did what I wanted it to do. It never bogged me down in useless desktop drivel.