In Love with Crunchbang

As i have an extensive SOHO network in my residence run almost entirely on Linux, I tend to use a single workstation as my 'admin' base camp, configuring and manipulating configs of other machines from that central point via SSH or even via tools like webmin or phpadmin.

However i have been using lately the most underpowered machine on my network to perform this task, the ancient Compaq workstation is powered by a Intel Pentium III 733 Mhz (Coppermine) CPU and has a measly 384 meg of RAM, the hard disk is a tiny 10Gig and the network card is a sturdy Intel Pro 100, the machines graphics are driven by a built in Intel 82815 graphics card. Why use this low specification?

Crunchbang linux is why......this distro provides a minimal openbox desktop and is so lightweight that it runs incredibly well on this machine, even in the full resolution of the 22inch LCD monitor i use.

I am so impressed by this distro, i started using around 12 months ago, now i use it as the central point of administration almost every day, i obviously use my more powerful machines for work that requires CPU grunt but as an underpinning OS for an admin workstation the Crunchbang distro hits the spot.

In its latest flavor 'statler' based on Debian Squeeze the distro includes FUSE and thus the ability to mount file systems on remote machines via SSH, which is a great facility, also the terminator shell which includes spilt screen capability is a great tool for a system admin.

The meager hardware spec of my crunchbang workhorse really is hidden by this lightweight distro which seems to be designed to run well on a PC that is 10 years old.

Many thanks to the team at Crunchbang, i am have totally fallen in love with this distro, in fact i am going to re-purpose a powerful worktation on my network to run this great OS to see if i can use it as a day to day workstation rather than an admin buggy.

Watch this space.