Hi folks,

in the past few years, I started some attempts to learn Linux, but never find a fine distribution. I tried Ubuntu for the first on an old IBM Thinkpad. But, I missed the kick to stay on Linux.

In December 2009 I purchased a brand new Sony Vaio Notebook with a lot of power - and Windows 7. Hacking a half year in Windows 7 and then I've been really angry and sorely about this stuff.

Well, I took an old computer, started again with Linux and had fun...

In February, I found Crunchbang at distrowatch.com, and recognized, it's worth to install and to try.

I took an old personal computer, AMD Athlon 64 Bit, 2 GB RAM and an ATI Radeon 9000 and installed Crunchbang with the desktop environment OpenBox.

Well, I can tell you - I like it. A great distro - and a great way to learn about Linux.

And a very friendly community.

Virtual Guests (Oracle VirtualBox) are CentOS-Linux and MacPup-Linux.

Regards,

Rainer

Hi James,

I haven't any experience in Wireless, yet, but I've installed Slitaz and Puppy on older personal computers. Slitaz is very fast and has a small memory footprint. It runs on almost any old hardware. It uses a secure user management with separation into root and standard user. Puppy brings a large amount of software, and it is really eyecandy, but you interact the whole day as root. Not the part of IT-Security I prefer. Conclusion: Try the three OS to find the operation system according to your taste!

Regards,

Rainer

Distro Name: CrunchBang Linux or, short: #!

http://crunchbanglinux.org/

Version Used: 10 Statler

Pros:
Stable
Fast
Highly Configurable
Small memory footprint

Cons:
Read the disclaimer of this distribution on the website
"CrunchBang Linux is not recommended for anyone needing a stable system or anyone who is not comfortable running into occasional, even frequent breakage. CrunchBang Linux could possibly make your computer go CRUNCH! BANG! Therefore CrunchBang Linux comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by applicable law.
CrunchBang Linux is an unofficial version of Debian GNU/Linux. Debian is a registered trademark of Software in the Public Interest, Inc. CrunchBang Linux is not affiliated with SPI."

Included Desktop Managers:
XFCE
OpenBox

Intended Users:
Experienced Linux Users

Personal Feelings/Opinion:
#! is fast, clear, lightweight, lean and with a desktop-environment like OpenBox the best way to dive deep into Linux and to learn the core stuff of Linux.

Screenshot:

CrunchBang #! - Linux is worth to give it a try:

http://crunchbanglinux.org

I'm running it on an old IBM T40, from the year 2003 - and it does the job very fine!

Have a nice day!

Regards