Why not a real debian based crunchbang?

Pretty sure we've had this one before...

Hi twigga, can you name some advantages for switching to Debian testing (Squeeze)? As I understand it, the Ubuntu and Debian projects are closely intertwined and share most of the same code. Also Squeeze seems like it would be a step backward from #!9.04 for some key packages (kernel 2.26 vs. 2.28 for example), comes with no "non-free" packages, and isn't as good with hardware detection (like the Broadcom wireless on my Dell Mini).

I agree a Debian #! would be most interesting but I can't think of a lot of advantages frankly. The main advantage that comes to my mind would be rolling release... what are some others?

Its not like you _cant_ install those non-free packages you speak of, Elive is debian based and comes with flash and such and was quite good at providing nvidia and ati drivers out of the box. As for the kernel, sure, its older, but the linux kernel 2.6.26 is on debian STABLE lenny, not squeeze testing. Squeeze uses the 2.6.28 kernel same as this new crunchbang As for the wireless, I cannot say, I have no wireless devices to worry about but I reckon it wouldnt be to hard to include these drivers same as in ubuntu. For the most part, I am pretty tired of seeing all of these ubuntu knockoffs and would rather see more variety. Maybe even a gentoo or arch based crunchbang would be most cool.

^Live Arch based distros are difficult to produce and are somewhat counter productive to the Arch philisophy. That said Chakra do a nice job of making a live Arch based distro. It's KDE but the nicest implementation of it that I've seen.

Hell, lets go for the big score and create a FreeBSD based Crunchbang. Now THAT would be something unique.

You guys keep talking about Arch-#!, Sid-#!... now gentoo-#!. Say, what is this crunchbang you keep talking about?

Why don't you just take a netinst image of Sid and try to install http://crunchbanglinux.org/wiki/applications (don't tell me the version numbers suck, you got awk for that) and port the /etc/skel from #! to your newly setup system? You'd be surprised how easy this will be. Maybe a few packages have different names, maybe some versions don't match, but this actually is what you guys are going to find out, isn't it?

I don't want to talk down corenominal's excellent work on #!, but he did not alter THAT much, as far as I can say most of the work he did happened in /etc/skel (wich is the "skelleton" for a newly created user) and a wise choice of packages.

You know what? As soon as I have my flatrate back (damn provider *shakes fist*) I'll try out my own Sid-Bang and report back to you.

Again: I love #!. It's what I was looking for. What I'm going to say is you don't need an official team or a maintainer If you want to see some Sidbang. Just do it!

@Archbang: I pretty much had a Arch based #! before I migrated to the real #!. My Arch followed the same ideas as #! and let's say about 80% of the programs I used could've been out of the #! applist. My reason to switch to #! were closely related to some hassle with AUR, since about half of the packages I tried couldn't be installed.

Reciept for your homegrown #!:
1. Create a minimal install of your favorite distro.
2. Install the apps you know from #!
3. Import #!'s /etc/skel
4. ???
5. Profit!

Before I forget that: For anyone willing to make an arch based distro, make sure to have a look at Larchify, larch and mkarchiso. You don't have remastersys over there, do you?

Last edited by Awebb (2009-08-14 19:47:08)

It really would be a great project, there are already kde based FreeBSD livecds/live installers out there. FreeBSD ports are often kept more up to date than any ubuntu or debian repository (that pretty much goes for any linux distros package repositories with the exception of maybe gentoo). The BSD license is in my opinion better than any version of the GPL. The only problems I could foresee with doing this is making it friendly with wireless devices (not impossible to do though). Not to mention Linux is in all reality just a kernel, it would be nice to base crunchbang around a real operating system Not trying to start a flamewar here at all by the way.

Have downloaded gentoo minimal, sabayon minimal, and arch, copying some of these crunchbang configs over to pendrive and then gonna give it a go. Will report on it later. slitaz may end up being a nice base also...

Just thought that Id add that its using much less ram than the cut down crunchbang lite that I installed. (significantly, by 100mb)

To be honest, its more of a "twiggabang" setup since I am using my own preferences for applications but still the same goals. So far Im pleased. Less ram is being used, its just as snappy, if not more snappy,  all wrapped around a newer kernel   In my opinion, debians GUI installer is just as friendly as the ubuntu installer. The apt repos are just as large (and there are more of them iirc). All that is lacking is a livecd, and from the number of ubuntu livecds I see popping up all over the globe, creating one  cant be to difficult

twigga, any updates? how is it with tint2?