How many of us are already taking this path? Feel free to share :)

I took the plunge recently, and found the instructions at http://dtx.omnsproject.org/?p=337 very concise and easy to follow.  I went a few steps further by going with openbox instead of xfce, selecting different media players, etc., but isn't that the point?  :)

Looking at the screenshot threads for the last couple of months it's really interesting how many of us have taken the plunge and are now using Debian Squeeze as a base for our machines. The range of crunchbang like efforts has been amazing. I'd now more than ever love to see a Crunchbang based on the final Squeeze release which should be a  cracker!

It will still be a bit longer to wait but it would make for a wonderful stable release :) :D :cool:

How many of us are already taking this path? Feel free to share :) http://crunchbanglinux.org/forums/topic … zesidbang/

It will still be a bit longer to wait but it would make for a wonderful stable release :) :D :cool:

Given that I exclusively use a 9-year-old Toshiba Portege (including heavy use of LaTeX), I am looking for stability and low memory usage.  I found one or two small problems which, I think are more to do with the Ubuntu base than #!.  In particular I found Openoffice from the Ubuntu reps (I mainly use Draw) to be a little unstable, crashing at least once a day.

Nevertheless, I did a command line install of Debian Testing followed by

aptitude install iceweasel gdm wicd gedit pcmanfm obconf obmenu gnome-power-manager fbpanel xorg openbox firmware-ralink wireless-tools flashplugin-nonfree flashplugin-nonfree openoffice.org evince texlive-latex-extra texlive-latex-recommended gtk-theme-switch gtk2-engines gimp galculator openoffice.org-help-en-gb openoffice.org-gtk ttf-liberation ttf-mscorefonts-installer cups-pdf system-config-printer evolution gthumb gnome-terminal

And that was it.

Without being scientific, I feel that the memory usage has reduced a bit (this machine has 390 MB) and stability is rock-solid -- maybe two Firefox (renamed Iceweasel) crashes in a month the only problems with not one OOo crash at all.

Of course, there is much more involved to produce a #! based upon Debian that just works for all hardware.

Anyway, my main point is to thank you all for your forum and the help that it provides for learning about all things Openbox and its configuration.

So nutshell answer: No! - My opinion.

I'm glad to hear that (I suspected it might be so).  I would hate to start up my shiny new $! installation and start crying! :D

Going from Jaunty to Karmic there were small changes but I had at least some idea about the basics.
I intend to use the next release of #! whatever it might be and whenever it might be released.

I more difficult (than with #!) to make "perfect" installation (wifi, drivers NVIDIA, JAVA, FLASH, and some others little problems :lol: For example,  Ihave difficulty with "CpuFreq"), but it's very interesting, and I think I could more understand Linux in this way !!! :D
During the configuration, I'm going to "copy" #! in a lot of thinks : dmenu, gmrun, conky, ... It's not so hard to have a Debian Sid looking like #!,it's very cool ! :)

The system seems to be more effecient, but it could be just an impression ... Wait and see ;)

my question would be: would i (being a relative linux noob and been using #! 9.04.1 for a few weeks now and who hasn't used debian before) notice the difference if #! was debian or ubuntu?

If #! stays with, OpenBox, I doubt you would notice anything.  For example I came from Xubuntu to #!.  Both built on Ubuntu, both use the same repos.. Adding OpenBox to Xubu would not have been the same, I would have missed the special configuration that has been done on OpenBox (and other things I'm probably unaware of) in #!.  But all my config files from Firefox, Thunderbird, Claws-mail, gFTP to name a few are here with me.

So from an absolutely "new to Linux" point of view, would you notice the difference. I doubt it, not if they keep everything that is #! in the new version. You would use Synaptic to get a program as now, they would be DEB packages as they are now.  Iceweasel is FF, and Icemail Thunderbird.

Notice the word: doubt. There is a small chance that you would notice something, and that might lead to a 5 minute learning curve.

Buy an old car, change the engine.  It's still the same car, you can still drive it, but the engine is new. The learning curve kicks in when you want to play with that extra 200 horse power your new engine has.  Control on curves, acceleration, manoeuvring, etc.  Driving a normal family version of a Chevy or Ford requires the same skills, even though the two cars are different.

Go to a non-debian based Linux and now you have a learning curve. (from slight to heavy)
Portage or pacman instead of synaptic. But it's a name, learn how to use it and it gets a file and installs it like synaptic.

There is always the terminal too:

sudo apt-get install "program program2 program3 -y"
or
sudo aptitude install "program program2 program3 -y"

Or this one I use, "autoinstall.sh" a space between the program names and a -y at the end so I don't have to answer "Yes" for each file.  I use that after a fresh install.  I also have to modify it as it was built with Xfce in mind to get programs that didn't come with the install.  Some of those are installed with #!.  :)

#!/bin/bash

sudo aptitude install smartmontools gthumb gedit gedit-plugins vnstat curl conky lm-sensors hddtemp ntp ntp-doc homebank aspell-en aspell-es ispell escputil weblint-perl libxml2-utils gimp-help-en flashplugin-nonfree libdate-manip-perl claws-mail claws-mail-doc claws-mail-extra-plugins hunspell myspell-tools myspell-es myspell-en-gb wcanadian-huge jpilot jpilot-backup jppy jppy-jpilot-plugins nvclock whois traceroute recordmydesktop openoffice.org openoffice.org-help-en-gb openoffice.org-help-es openoffice.org-thesaurus-en-us screenruler -y

it's in my path so in a terminal I type autoinstall and I get them all.

So nutshell answer: No! - My opinion.

Sorry for the long winded response, that's just me at times.  :D

Have a nice day.
Bruce

My Acer Aspire 6530 is currently a mutant Crunchbang/Ubuntu 9.10 build but would absolutely welcome Debian as a new base. Yes it is a bit more work on the front end, however I think the bulk of this (installing the extra apps after a net install of testing) could be handled by a script, though I may be thinking to simply.

This is the Dr. Phil I know:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr_Phil

But I think p0rksh3d was trying to refer to Philip.

OFF Topic
Wait a sec, Dr. Phil. former psychologist, TV --- sounds like... naaaa it couldn't be ...

You sure you don't mean Dr. Fraser and a radio show?

"No users were found matching your criteria"
End of this Off Topic topic.  :)

We now resume with the On Topic topic:
Debian Testing as base for next Crunchbang release (Suggestion)

Have a nice day.
Bruce

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr_Phil

But I think p0rksh3d was trying to refer to Philip.

It's a great idea and I will like it if Dr. Phil chooses it.  9.10 is also fine.

OK, being the new kid on the block, I'll bite:

Who's Dr. Phil?

Have a nice day.
Bruce