#!CrunchBang!#

I wanted to give crunchbang another chance and so far I'm really happy I did. What is it? It's a non-official Ubuntu distro that uses the openbox desktop manager and gtk+ apps. The install did not natively support my broadcom wireless adapter, but after connecting via eth0 wired and editing my sources list according to the list of Salimane Moustapha, I used the "restricted device manager" to identify and install the appropriate driver and crunchbang I was online with wireless! Then I spent time making several of the suggested updates and installs on Salimanes extremely helpful ubuntu blog and since then I've just been exploring what this distro has to offer. In general, it is a clean, dark-themed desktop which I like. But most important is it is actually quite fast (really rivaling Puppy so far) and comes with all the support of the ubuntu community.

Crunchbang comes stock with loads of well-chosen lightweight apps that provide a very full-featured system. Internet tools include: firefox, liferea feed reader, pidgin IM client, gpodder Podcast catcher, transmission bittorrent client, gftp client, skype, gwibber microblog client. Audio/Video tools: VLC player, rhythmbox, audacity, kino vid editor, and more. Other apps include abiword, gnumeric spreadsheet, gimp, inkscape, xfburn CD/DVD creator.

I went ahead and added a frugal install of Puppy 4.2.1 to my /home partition of crunchbang. I set it back up the way I wanted it with xmms player and I finally figured out how to get the openoffice.org .sfs file to work. I know I will keep working with puppy, but crunchbang is nipping at its heels at this point....