CrunchBang++ 1.0 OS Review

Linux projects come and go. There have been many distributions (distros) with thriving communities that were discontinued for one reason or another. Yet, the announcement of CrunchBang’s demise was shocking. The disbelief and the desire for the project to continue spurned a successor, known as Bunsen Labs. Although unaffiliated with any past CrunchBang developer, CrunchBang++ (#!++) is an attempt to continue the legacy of one of the most loved minimalist distros.

#!++ is based on Debian 8 and uses its installer as well. While this may have given users pause a few years ago, the Debian installer has become increasingly user-friendly in recent releases. The distro, however, is unable to run a live system, which is a downer for some new users trying to decide whether the distro is worth the trouble of installing, but it does have installable medium for both 32- and 64-bit machines.

Once installed the distro drops you to a minimalist OpenBox -based desktop and automatically launches a post-install configuration script that guides you through some configuration options, such as installing printer support or Java Runtime Environment, LibreOffice, LAMP stack etc. It’s not compulsory to run the 12-step script, as it requires a working internet connection, and you can launch it at any time from the terminal with cbpp-welcome.

The desktop lacks a dedicated application menu so a right-click on the desktop reveals the menu in true OpenBox fashion. Although there’s a sizeable collection of default apps, such as IceWeasel browser, VLC media player, Gimp, Abiword, Atril document viewer, Transmission, Filezilla, etc, the more features and commonplace apps, such as LibreOffice and Chrome browser are missing. The distro does provide an installer script for these prominent apps, which saves you the trouble of manually installing them using the graphical Synaptic Package Manager or apt-get tool. Incredibly, the distro similarly provides installers for DropBox and VNC server.

If you’re used to any of the popular flashy looking modern distros, you’ll find the bare grey-themed look rather depressing. However, OpenBox is highly configurable; you can change just about every element of the desktop to get a more colorful desktop if you want.

Apart from reporting the essential system stats, the Conky system monitor on the right of the desktop also lists a number of default keyboard shortcuts, e.g. for launching the file manager, terminal, media player etc. Note: The default shortcuts make use of the Super key so you’ll have to reconfigure if you don’t have one.

Even though the distro ships with only two multimedia tools: VLC and Xfburn to burn discs, it supports a number of formats out of the box and Debian’s non-free repository is enabled by default.

If you spend a lot of time on the command-line, you’ll find commands such as ifconfig can’t be run as a nonroot user. This is because /sbin isn’t included in the $PATH. Run export PATH=$PATH:/sbin to clear up the problem.

Plenty of lightweight distros swap KDE or Gnome for Xfce or LXDE. There are also hosts that leave out the desktop environment entirely and build the GUI along a window manager, such as OpenBox. While #!++ firmly falls in the latter category, the distro has done much more to deliver a very fast system that’s low on resources.

Verdict

We give a total rating of 85/100 for CurnchBang++1.0. This young distro doesn’t even have a forum board (it uses Reddit) but works as advertised. To download CurnchBang++ 1.0, go here.

Sabayon 15.06 OS Review

Keeping true to its Gentoo heritage, Sabayon 15.06 Gnome is incredibly fast, especially when compared with its more famous peers. While a Gentoo installation can sometimes last for many days depending on your hardware setup, Sabayon’s desire to provide a ready to use desktop out of the box, makes it ideal for those looking to work with a rolling-release distro with the less effort.

Sabayon provides a perfect blend of advanced features like source-based rolling releases with the ease of live installable medium with pre-packaged binaries. As well as minimal edition that’s light on graphical environment and uses an Openbox -powered desktop, the distro offers 64-bit images for Gnome, KDE, and XFCE variants.

User friendly

The distro wants to be used and is driven by a need to please users. Therefore, it features applications across categories like multimedia and internet and a vast collection of useful accessories. However, despite weighing in at 1.7GB, the Gnome edition doesn’t feature an office suite or even a word processor, and various other mainstream applications, e.g. VLC. Several applications, such as Videos and the Steam installer refuse to launch and the distro doesn’t even spit out a crash report or any errors.

The distro makes up for the missing applications with its impressive package manager, Rigo, although it looks nothing like Ubuntu Software Center or Synaptic, Rigo is a powerful app. It can be used to install updates, configure repositories (repos), in addition to searching and installing extra packages. It also serves as a bulletin board, informing you of community messages.

While Rigo connects to the Sabayon’s software repos that carry binary packages, you can also use Gentoo’s repos and install source packages on Sabayon using Portage. This unique feature gives users the choice to run a source- or binary-based distro.

The distro uses Anaconda installer, but unlike the recent releases of Fedora, Sabayon’s installer comes with buttons positioned in sensible places. The install appears to be a little slow, compared to other distros, and while the distro will automatically detect your time zone, it doesn’t let you choose what packages to install, as is the standard operating procedure for most distros. You can also use Gparted from the live system to carve space for the distro if you dislike Anaconda’s partitioner. On our test machines, the installation crashed when we chose LVM partitioning; however, there are no forum posts on the subject, suggesting it might be a rare abnormality and not a full-blown bug. The progress bar on the install also freezes once it gets to the halfway point even if the installation continues.

The distro does well to hide its Gnome credentials. The desktop features an Applications menu on the top-left of the screen and features a categorized list of included apps. You can click the ‘Activities Overview’ button at the bottom for the traditional Gnome 3 look. The distro also ships with support for NVidia and AMD GPU drivers along with Kernel 4.0, Kodi Media Center, Chrome, and various other internet and multimedia app with out of the box support for various open source and proprietary formats.

Sabayon is like Arch or Gentoo but with a far easier installation. The latest release looks as good as any modern distro even if it could have done with a bit more testing. We recommend this distro if you’re looking for a highly customizable but easy to install feature-rich distro.

Verdict

We give a total rating of 84/100 for Sabayon 15.06 GNOME OS. It is an excellent choice for users looking to move towards Gentoo but are wary of its learning curve. To download Sabayon 15.06, go here.

Fedora 22 Workstation Review

For its last release, Fedora has abandoned its long established six-month release cycle to bring about a number of organizational and systemic changes. The chief among these was the release of three distinct editions: Workstation, Cloud, and Server. The other major change was the announcement of Fedora.next, which is the name for the Fedora Project’s roadmap for the next decade.

With the latest release, the distro returns to a six-month release cycle but continues to produce the three editions. Each edition builds on a common base and all the necessary packages are then added to make the edition suitable for the assigned function. 

We’ve chosen to review the Workstation edition, which is available as an ISO for 32- and 64-bit machines. This live installable edition is designed for home users, but is perfectly suited for professionals and can quickly be turned into a developer’s haven.

Cutting edge

As a test bed for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), Fedora is uniquely positioned to deliver innovative technologies to new users. It’s a distro that ships with the latest software and this release is no different.

The Gnome Display Manager (GDM) now defaults to Wayland display server instead of X.org. While the default Gnome session still uses X, the next Fedora release will most likely default to Wayland.

The distro features Gnome 3.16, which has a large number of visual improvements and new features. The notification area has been revamped and notifications now appear anchored to the center of the top bar. An unobtrusive marker informs you of any unread notifications, such as background terminal jobs, chat messages, updates, etc.

The Files application, login screen, Activities overview, and various other parts of the desktop, feature an updated look. Boxes, the default application for managing virtual and remote machines features has, among other things, a revamped box creation assistant, and various improvements to the Preferences dialogs.

The Software app, which has come a long way since its introduction in Fedora 20, now also lets you install extras, such as fonts and codecs, apart from installing updates and fetching new software. This robust tool is as friendly as Ubuntu Software Center, and just as fast and efficient.

Fedora 22 is the first release that doesn’t use Yum as the package manager. Instead, it uses DNF – a fork of Yum – that offers similar functionality and relies on the same RPM package repositories as always. Under the hood, DNF uses an improved dependency resolver, hawkey, and since DNF is command-line compatible with Yum, most of the Yum commands, such as install, groupinstall, remove, etc., work the same way with DNF.

Fedora has often been described as not ideal for new users but the improved Anaconda installer is quite friendly. We note that although it doesn’t feature major changes, compared to the last release, it seems a bit sluggish. The positioning of the buttons at the top in the installer continues to boggle the mind, but the installer itself is as good as alternatives found in other distros.

Existing Fedora users will appreciate the various visual improvements and feature additions in the latest release. For those already running a RPM-based distro, Fedora 22 is robust, stable, and fast enough to tempt you away from your current distro.

Verdict

We give a total rating of 96/100 for Fedora 22 Workstation. It is a Solid office, internet, and multimedia software, coupled with user-friendly tools makes it an all-round distro. To download Fedora 22, go here.