Bunsen Labs Linux

 For the last twenty or so years I've been reusing old computer hardware for various of my projects, something that has invariably involved installing Linux as often software bloat on both Windows and OS X has reduced the usefulness of the hardware (and which is why I've been able to pick up some pretty good machines for not a lot from hardware recyclers and refurbishers.)

I've played with quite a few distributions over the years, but these days  the two I feel most comfortable with are Crunchbang++ and Ubuntu.

Crunchbang ++ I tend to install on resource limited hardware - which is why I used it when installing Linux on a Chromebook, and Ubuntu on anything else.

Crunchbang started out as a custom Linux distribution designed to use fewer resources than most mainstream distributions.

Development of the original project halted in 2015, but it spawned two successor projects, Crunchbang++ and BunsenLabs linux.

For a long time both projects were very similar as regards installation and the user experience and I did run BunsenLabs linux on an old netbook for a number of years, but for the last few years Crunchbang++ has been my go to lightweight distribution.

However, when I was working out what I could use in my Linux on Chromebook project I came across quite a few reviews that mentioned Boron, the latest Bunsenlabs distribution as being quite slick and resource efficient, though not quite as minimal in its disk usage as Crunchbang++.

So, I thought I'd take a look, and this morning I built a BunsenLabs VM using VirtualBox on my Dell Latitude.

Like CrunchBang++ installation was via the standard Debian installer and once booted and logged in you are presented with a customised OpenBox desktop not that different from the standard Crunchbang desktop, albeit in a nice blue green shade and with the time and connection status on the bottom left rather than on the top right

Like Crunchbang there is an option to install additional software

but unlike with Crunchbang++ AbiWord and Gnumeric are not installed and there's no option to skip the installation of LibreOffice, and to be fair, if you have LibreOffice there's no real need to install AbiWord and Gnumeric.

Now, when I installed Crunchbang++ on my old Chromebook, I deliberately went for AbiWord and Gnumeric rather than LibreOffice in the expectation that I would save a bit of disk space - remember that the Asus C202 Chromebook only had 16GB of eMMC storage - so what is the disk usage under Bunsen Labs?

and it's not that bad  - around 6GB, about the same Crunchbang++ without LibreOffice

making BunsenLabs a realistic option on resource constrained hardware.

Personally, I'm comfortable with CrunchBang++ and in no hurry to change, but I certainly would be happy to suggest BunsenLabs as an alternative to other lightweight distributions such as Lubuntu, especially in a situation where the user experience was important - the current BunsenLabs desktop feels a little more slick and modern that the current Lubuntu or Crunchbang++ desktops...