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CrunchBang: The Rest of the Story

Paul Harvey — he was a radio commentator in decades past, kids (check him out on Wikipedia) — used to end many of his radio broadcasts with, “. . . so now, you know the rest of the story.”

Here’s the rest of the story regarding successors, spins or forks of CrunchBang. The tech media is falling over itself reporting that the “successor” to CrunchBang is something called #!++ which, to many CrunchBang insiders, is nothing more than one — but not “the resurrection” — project based on CrunchBang. It’s a project that appears, in the opinion of many CrunchBang contributors, as one that is trying to capitalize on the name, now that it’s “available,” in a manner of speaking.

However, many long-time CrunchBang contributors and forum moderators (of which I am one) have banded together to form what is now being called Bunsen Labs — named after the Muppets’ top scientist Dr. Bunsen Honeydew, perhaps? — to preserve the spirit of the technological simplicity initiated by CrunchBang, and combine it with maintaining the spirit of openness and helpfulness that was the hallmark of the CrunchBang community.

Rather than rushing into producing something quick and ghoulishly capitalizing on attention given to a distro in demise — a distro that has meant so much to so many — Bunsen Labs is taking a more careful and thoughtful approach in refocusing the original intent of the original distro to make sure what the original lead developer started remains intact.

There will be a Birds of a Feather meetup at this week’s SCALE 13x regarding the plans that Bunsen Labs has for a successor distro to CrunchBang — again it’s one successor to the distro, and there will be more than one — however it bears repeating that this project has the support of many of the CrunchBang community regulars and leadership.

And that, as Paul Harvey would say, is the rest of the story.

9 Comments

  1. Abdel Abdel February 18, 2015

    I don’t know about the others, but for me the demise of Crunchbang was a huge loss. So seeing the project coming to life again with gradual but certain and solid steps is worth the wait.

  2. admiral vinogradov admiral vinogradov February 19, 2015

    What is generously refer to here as “the tech media” is really just dismal click-baity regurgitation of other people’s content.
    Anyway, can’t this little distro rest in peace? It wanted to die, it died, let it go now.

  3. simon simon February 19, 2015

    Don’t rebase it on Jessy you dick!

  4. Abdel Abdel February 19, 2015

    @ admiral vinogradov
    The distro has no life of its own. It’s the community that decide if they still need it to carry on living or not. And I can guarantee you that at least here in my environment (North African developing country) where many people are still using legacy hardware, Crunchbang and similar very lightweight distros are greatly needed.

  5. Jay LaCroix Jay LaCroix February 19, 2015

    Capitalize on the name? You forgot to mention that Corenominal himself blessed the name. It’s not capitalizing on the name, it’s actually a great continuation. Have you used it? If you had, you’d have seen that we already do have a spiritual successor in the form of #!++, and it’s quite good. It takes what makes #! great, and includes only required changes (such as compatibility with GTK3, for example).

    Rather than just write an article for the sole purpose of insulting a great project and recommending your own, you should just get the community members you mentioned on board with #!++ and contribute to that, rather than creating yet another spin of #! that doesn’t need to exist. More than one project that has the exact same goal is a waste of resources.

  6. Jay LaCroix Jay LaCroix February 19, 2015

    Also, I highly recommend that you remove this article from this blog as quick as you possibly can, while you still have credibility.

  7. VastOne VastOne February 23, 2015

    The arrogance of this once vaulted community is beyond comprehension. The new page on their main web site is just an example of where their heads are at – Choose Bunsen or None

    I can certainly see why Corenominal would want to disassociate with this and move on

    It is conveniently self serving to have all the labels that Larry Cafiero has related to CrunchBang.. you could almost say it was his project and his will to do whatever he wants with it. As a professed spokesman for FOSS, I find his writings and behaviors alarming, along with most of the moderators of the once vaulted #! Community

    The idea that what Corenominal created with #! could slip to this level of bitterness and vitriol is yet another example of why Linux in general fails in so many ways…

    It is like watching us eat our own young.. Who wants to be a part of that?

  8. actionless actionless February 26, 2015

    From article it’s not really clear what is the problem, why you guys want to the same thing but don’t want to do it together?

  9. Jeff Jeff March 3, 2015

    From what I understand, the #!++ guy offered to help with Bunsen, and after being rejected as “an outsider” set out to build his own. Larry’s being kind of petty about it here, I think. Isn’t freedom and sharing the whole idea with Linux?

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