CrunchBang Linux (abbreviated #!) is an unmaintained

Linux distribution A Linux distribution, often abbreviated as distro, is an operating system that includes the Linux kernel for its kernel functionality. Although the name does not imply product distribution per se, a distro—if distributed on its own—is oft ...

derived from

Debian Debian () is a free and open-source software, free and open source Linux distribution, developed by the Debian Project, which was established by Ian Murdock in August 1993. Debian is one of the oldest operating systems based on the Linux kerne ...

by Philip Newborough (who is more commonly known by his

username A user is a person who uses a computer or Computer network, network Service (systems architecture), service. A user often has a user account and is identified to the system by a username (or user name). Some software products provide serv ...

, ). CrunchBang was designed to use comparatively few system resources. Instead of a

desktop environment In computing, a desktop environment (DE) is an implementation of the desktop metaphor made of a bundle of programs running on top of a computer operating system that share a common graphical user interface (GUI), sometimes described as a graphi ...

it used a customized implementation of the Openbox

window manager A window manager is system software that controls the placement and appearance of window (computing), windows within a windowing system in a graphical user interface. Most window managers are designed to help provide a desktop environment. They ...

. Many of its preinstalled applications used the

GTK+ GTK (formerly GIMP ToolKit and GTK+) is a free software cross-platform widget toolkit for creating graphical user interfaces (GUIs). It is licensed under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License, allowing both free and proprietary s ...

widget toolkit A widget toolkit, widget library, GUI toolkit, or UX library is a library (computing), library or a collection of libraries containing a set of graphical control elements (called ''widgets'') used to construct the graphical user interface (GUI) of ...

. CrunchBang had its own

software repository A software repository, or repo for short, is a storage location for Package format, software packages. Often a table of contents is also stored, along with metadata. A software repository is typically managed by source or version control, or rep ...

but drew the vast majority of packages from Debian's repositories. Philip Newborough announced on 6 February 2015 that he had stopped developing CrunchBang and that users would benefit from using vanilla Debian. Some Linux distributions have arisen in its place in an effort to continue its environment. Among the most significant are BunsenLabs and CrunchBang++.

Editions

CrunchBang Linux provided an Openbox version for

i686 The P6 microarchitecture is the sixth-generation Intel x86 microarchitecture, implemented by the Pentium Pro microprocessor that was introduced in November 1995. It is frequently referred to as i686. It was planned to be succeeded by the NetBur ...

i486 The Intel 486, officially named i486 and also known as 80486, is a microprocessor introduced in 1989. It is a higher-performance follow-up to the i386, Intel 386. It represents the fourth generation of binary compatible CPUs following the Inte ...

and

amd64 x86-64 (also known as x64, x86_64, AMD64, and Intel 64) is a 64-bit extension of the x86 instruction set. It was announced in 1999 and first available in the AMD Opteron family in 2003. It introduces two new operating modes: 64-bit mode an ...

architectures.DistroWatch
CrunchBang Linux
". Retrieved on 28 January 2014. Until October 2010 there also was a "Lite" version with fewer installed applications. The "Lite" version was effectively discontinued after the distribution on which it was based – Ubuntu 9.04 – reached its end-of-life and CrunchBang prepared to switch to a different base system. CrunchBang 10, made available in February 2011, was the first version based on Debian. The final version, CrunchBang 11, was made available on 6 May 2013. Each CrunchBang Linux release was given a

version number Software versioning is the process of assigning either unique ''version names'' or unique ''version numbers'' to unique states of computer software. Within a given version number category (e.g., major or minor), these numbers are generally assig ...

as well as a

code name A code name, codename, call sign, or cryptonym is a code word or name used, sometimes clandestinely, to refer to another name, word, project, or person. Code names are often used for military purposes, or in espionage. They may also be used in ...

, using names of '' Muppet Show'' characters. The first letter of the code name was the first letter of the upstream Debian release (previously Debian Squeeze and CrunchBang Statler and currently Debian Wheezy and CrunchBang Waldorf).

Reception

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

Successors

Newborough announced in February 2015 that he was abandoning further development of CrunchBang Linux, feeling that it no longer served a purpose. Many users disagreed, and a number of them proceeded to develop successor distributions BunsenLabs, CrunchBang++ (#!++) and CrunchBang-Monara.

BunsenLabs

BunsenLabs Linux is a community-organized successor to Crunchbang. It is based on the Debian 10 (Buster) stable release. Between the 17th and 30th of September 2015, CrunchBang's domain began redirecting t
BunsenLabs
BunsenLabs is one of the few modern Debian-based live distributions that still offers a CD edition supporting 32-bit systems, with both the X Window System and a modern version of Firefox, making the distro useful for running on old computers with just around 1 GB of RAM. The latest version BunsenLabs "Boron", based on Debian 12, was released on 24 Jan 2024.

CrunchBang++

CrunchBang PlusPlus (#!++) was developed in response to Newborough's announcement of the end of CrunchBang. It is currently based on the

Bookworm (release 12) distribution. Release 1.0 was announced on 29 April 2015. A version based on Debian 10.0 was released on 8 July 2019. The version based on Debian 11.0 was released on 16 August 2021, version based on Debian 11.1 was released on 23 September 2021. The latest version based on Debian 12.0 was released on 11 June, 2023.

References

External links

* https://www.crunchbangplusplus.org/ Official Crunchbang++ website
Official website archives
on Archive.org *
CrunchBang Archive
{{DEFAULTSORT:Crunchbang Linux Debian-based distributions Discontinued Linux distributions Linux distributions