The Linux Ninja

After buying my Asus EEE PC 1000HA, I initially installed Ubuntu Netbook Remix on it. After learning more about (#!) CrunchBang Linux and seeing that they had released an optimized version for the EEE PC called CrunchEEE. I’ve been using CrunchEEE on my EEE PC for the last week and decided to do a review.

CrunchEEE uses an optimized version of the Ubuntu kernel called the lean kernel that loads fewer kernel modules by default and is more optimized for speed. I could tell a difference in the boot speed from the Ubuntu Netbook Remix and CrunchEEE with CrunchEEE being faster. CrunchEEE (and Ubuntu) had no problems loading all of the necessary wireless, ethernet, IDE, etc. drivers.

I have enjoyed using OpenBox as my desktop environment, but I am also no stranger to minimalist window managers. I used to run WindowMaker as my desktop environment on one of my old laptops because of the customizability and speed. OpenBox performs exceptionally well on the EEE PC, especially compared to the stripped down GNOME I had configured under Ubuntu. I fully expected a speed improvement, but OpenBox’s efficiency surpassed my expectations. PCMan is now the default file manager, but I still prefer Thunar over it. I like Terminator as the default terminal application and have really taken a liking to its ability to split and resize terminals in the window.  The one issue I have with OpenBox is an issue that I have with default GNOME installations: the default behavior of GNOME Power Manager when closing the lid of the EEE PC/laptop is to turn the screen off, even when on battery power. I would prefer that the system go into sleep mode when I do this by default, but it’s a simple enough change once you get the GNOME Power Manager to appear (OpenBox uses this as well).

CrunchEEE also has an “EEE Control Center”-like applet by default in the system tray that lets you quickly enable/disable the wireless, ethernet, bluetooth, and cpu scaling functions. One of my favorite things to do in distributions is to set up a bunch of customized shortcut key combinations to quickly launch things like an xterm session, firefox, or a mail client. OpenBox has shortcuts to edit all of its config files in the right-click menu by default which made doing this very easy. CrunchEEE auto-launches Conky with a basic config file to give you some basic system statistics, which I found nice. I’m a relatively new Conky user, but I’ve found it to be easily customizable and I have found many user-provided configurations that I like as well.

So far, I have experienced no stability issues with any of the packages in CrunchEEE and have had no hardware compatibility issues either. For an experienced linux user I would definitely recommend CrunchEEE as a distribution to try out. For the inexperience Linux user, I might recommend they stick with a distribution that uses GNOME or KDE as the desktop due to the need to manually edit config files instead of using GUI tools for all of the configuration.

Also, I would recommend listening to Episode 77 of the Linux Outlaws for Fab’s take on CrunchEEE (hint: his overall opinion is similar to mine).