Sadly the creator of Crunchbang Linux has decided to end the project, with the view that vanilla Debian can be used the same way. Probably he is right; it’s probably not necessary to maintain a separate distribution and repositories, when what makes Crunchbang so special to me is its configuration and UI. CrunchBang has been a wonderful distro for me, and for a while my only wish has been to set something similar up on a Raspberry Pi or non-Debian distro. It’s just such a nice low-end UI, I like it so much better than LXDE or XFCE.
So postbanging will be some impetus to learn how to configure a Linux desktop environment from scratch. Crunchbang is a Debian-based distro built on the Openbox window manager, Conky, and tint2. An essential guide is adding CrunchBang features to other distros and the list of CrunchBang applications. Here is a very useful thread from the CrunchBang forums. Read some more: Getting started with OpenBox, OpenBox default configuration, xinitrc, configuring tint2. There is plenty to read about configuring conky ( 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 ).
These are just the most basic stuff. Nothing on actual apps later, and I have little interest in a graphical login—I prefer typing startx. I’m starting with a fresh virtual machine running a jessie RC1 netinstall ISO.
apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade apt-get install xorg, xinit apt-get install openbox apt-get install tint2, conky, obmenu, ttf-liberation cd ~ mkdir -p ~/.config/openbox cp -R /etc/xdg/openbox/* ~/.config/openbox # Edit .xinitrc to start OpenBox echo "exec openbox-session" >> .xinitrc # Edit .config/openbox/autostart to start tint2 and conky echo "(sleep 1s && tint2) &" >> ~/.config/openbox/autostart echo "(sleep 2s && conky) &" >> ~/.config/openbox/autostart
After running startx, command-click on the screen to bring up the menu, then open the Terminal editor. Next, edit the tint2 configuration files with nano ~/.config/tint2/tint2rc .
panel_size = 0 30 # to get full monitor width panel_position = top center horizontal # puts the panel at top
Finally, configure your ~/.conkyrc file. Here’s one based on the CrunchBang version, configured to display only default OpenBox keybindings:
##############################################
# Settings
##############################################
background yes
use_xft yes
xftfont Liberation Sans:size=9
xftalpha 1
update_interval 1.0
total_run_times 0
own_window yes
own_window_transparent yes
own_window_type desktop
#own_window_argb_visual yes
own_window_hints undecorated,below,sticky,skip_taskbar,skip_pager
double_buffer yes
minimum_size 200 200
maximum_width 240
draw_shades no
draw_outline no
draw_borders no
draw_graph_borders no
default_color 656667
default_shade_color 000000
default_outline_color 828282
alignment top_right
gap_x 12
gap_y 56
no_buffers yes
uppercase no
cpu_avg_samples 2
override_utf8_locale no
##############################################
# Output
##############################################
TEXT
S Y S T E M I N F O
${hr}
Host:$alignr$nodename
Uptime:$alignr$uptime
RAM:$alignr$mem/$memmax
Swap usage:$alignr$swap/$swapmax
Disk usage:$alignr${fs_used /}/${fs_size /}
CPU usage:$alignr${cpu cpu0}%
S H O R T C U T K E Y S
${hr}
Alt+F4$alignr Close Window
Alt+Tab$alignr Cycle Windows
Alt+Space$alignr Show Menu
Alt+Escape$alignr Activate Last Window
EDIT 2015-02-22
The CrunchBang community is continuing with a project named Bunsen Labs Linux, which will be mostly install and configuration scripts for a vanilla Debian netinstall. They have some useful information on getting an install going There’s another individual-directed offshoot at crunchbangplusplus.org.
I dunno, tiling window managers and NixOS are looking pretty interesting as well.
EDIT 2015-02-24
StumpWM is like all Lisp tools set up like emacs :( but xmonad: Awesome.
panglott 