What’s that sound?

Originally I had planned to write about Philip Newborough of Lincoln, England, who some know as corenominal and who even others know as the lead developer of CrunchBang GNU/Linux. The tale I had originally conceived to put on pixels here was how Philip not only talks the FOSS talk, but he also walks the FOSS walk: He has decided to leave gainful employment recently in order to concentrate on developing CrunchBang.

That’s no small feat, for starters, and it takes an enormous amount of courage to make that proverbial leap, especially when one has a family, as Philip does. Additionally, this leap of faith multiplies by a factor of several due to the enormous amount of confidence in the project one must have to press forward with this life-altering change.

Fortunately for Philip, his Debian-based distro CrunchBang does not let him down.

And while I had planned to write about Philip and how he took the plunge, I thought it would be a better blog to talk about the improvements he has made to what can clearly be described as the best distro you’ve never heard of.

With the cacophony of writers singing the praises of Linux Mint on the release of Linux Mint 12 Lisa, it might be a good idea to listen to the more dulcet tones of a Crash and a Bang and take a look the new release of CrunchBang Statler as well.

Over the weekend, Philip made available some updated CrunchBang Statler images. The changes were somewhat profound and, as Philip points out in his blog, “the new images are not really about additional features, but more about what has been removed and/or cleaned up (although there are a few new features to look forward to).”

CrunchBang is going the window manager route with Openbox, so that means Xfce version of CrunchBang is retired. the main thing to have been removed/retired is the Xfce version. “Besides,” Philip writes, “there are plenty of brilliant Xfce based distributions available, and if you know what you are doing, installing Xfce under Debian is really not too difficult.”

GDM? Gone, and it’s replaced by SLiM.

Plymouth? Gone, and the decision to remove it was really a personal preference. “I apologise to any bling lovers, but personally, I believe that graphical boot loaders take away more than they give,” Philip writers. “Also, CrunchBang is not really an exercise in branding and so removing a flashing logo is not a problem at all.”

So what’s new and/or added to CrunchBang Statler?

Openbox 3.5 — The latest and greatest version of the window manager.

Iceweasel/Firefox 8 replaces Chromium 9 — CrunchBang seems to switch back-and-forth between default browsers, according to Philip, probably like a lot of users
do. “I do not think this is problem, but merely reflects the state of browser development and availability at the time.” Agreed.

Geany replaces gedit — Geany is highly configurable, has lots of great plugins and is desktop environment independent. So it serves as an adequate replacement.

Gigolo and Thunar for managing connections to remote file systems — CrunchBang Statler includes Gigolo, configuring it to work out-of-the-box with Thunar. It is now simple to connect to remote file systems via SSH and Samba, among others.

LibreOffice replaces OpenOffice.org — Writes Philip: “Actually, CrunchBang ships with AbiWord and Gnumeric, but many people choose to install a more feature rich office suite via the CrunchBang post installation script. The script has been changed to suggest LibreOffice.”

I’ve been using CrunchBang since July on a second laptop that usually accompanies me wherever I go (long story there, but part of it can be found in an old blog here). I have always liked the speed CrunchBang afforded this old laptop, and if it runs this well on older hardware, it must fly on newer machines.

You can easily consider me a convert to the ranks of the CrunchBangers, and as such I put my money where my mouth is, so to speak. Philip and CrunchBang are raising funds to get things off the ground, and I’d invite you to join me in donating to help CrunchBang along.

So thanks to Philip and the CrunchBang team for making an excellent distro.

(Larry Cafiero is one of the founders of the Lindependence Project and has just started developing software in his new home office. Watch this space.)

Scaling up for SCALE 10X

The fall and winter may turn our attention to the holidays — pick whichever one you choose to celebrate in your own way — but the folks at the Southern California Linux Expo are busy putting together what could turn out to be a landmark FOSS event for North America.

The Southern California Linux Expo — SCALE 10X — celebrates its 10th year when it opens on the Martin Luther King holiday weekend (Jan. 20-22). As this is a month ahead of the usual February date for SCALE, things seem to be coming together for the event.

SCALE started 10 years ago with a single day event at the University of Southern California with two tracks and 400 attendees. Considering that SCALE 10X will be a three day event, with as many as a half-dozen tracks and possibly as many as 2,000 attendees, it’s clear that FOSS is alive and thriving.

The response to the Call for Papers — which closes next week on Nov. 17 — has been strong, so get those papers in, if you haven’t already. A winner for the design contest, which allowed artists to design the logo to go on signs, swag and other SCALE 10X items, has been chosen (I know who it is — nee nur nee nur — but a release is going out on it later so everyone will know).

Some of the “usual suspects” for all day events — Fedora with their Fedora Activity Day and Ubuntu with UbuCon, for starters — are already on board, as well as SCALE University being in session again this year. In addition, the annual DevOpsDay LA and PGP Keysigning party are on tap again this year.

What deserves special mention are two things new to SCALE this year: Linux Beginner Training and SCALE Kids Conference.

Linux Beginner Training is targeted for the absolute Linux beginner, or for someone who’s interested in Linux but has no idea how to get started. The course will run all day Saturday and Sunday and consists of a half-day of introductory and overview tutorials, followed by a day and a half of intensive training in how to install, configure and maintain a Linux desktop installation. Not a bad deal for $25.

SCALE Kids Conference — soon to be “SCALE: The Next Generation” — lets the FOSS community leaders of tomorrow spotlight their talents and ideas today. Open to kids 10 and older, the goal of conference is to be as “kid driven” as possible, offering a unique opportunity to see & experience the inner workings of planning a conference. Kids will be able to determine the content and help steer the direction that this mini-conference will take.

As developments occur, I’ll report them, but meanwhile if you want to keep up on your own — not to mention registering early for SCALE 10X (always a good idea) — you can do so here.

See you in Los Angeles.

[The truth-in-advertising small print: I have worked as a volunteer for SCALE for the last three years, and I serve on the Public Relations Committee as a co-chair as well as a press liaison for the event.]

(Larry Cafiero is one of the founders of the Lindependence Project and has just started developing software in his new home office. Watch this space.)

Three for the road

It’s one of those days: Driving a lot today taking family from point A to point B allows one a significant amount of thought that can go into a blog post. But we’ll have to tackle the weightier issues of FOSS another time in order to give you a few tidbits, like

Take ‘er down, ensign: Fedora 16, with the release name Verne (as in Jules, as in “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea” — hence the submarine motif), is ready and available from the Fedora Project. This one is a keeper — a solid release. Kudos to the Fedora Project team once again. Clearly there will be more on this in forthcoming blog item.

SCALE 10X registration opens: Yep, that’s right. It’s only November, but since SCALE 10X happens a month earlier next year — the Martin Luther King Day weekend in January — things are ramping up for the Southern California Linux Expo. Want to go? Head on over to the site and register.

You don’t have to live like a refugee: Michelle Blowers wrote in her blog yesterday about the open arms Debian has for anyone — from developers to users — who are unhappy with the direction Ubuntu is taking to “return home.” Without Debian, of course, there’s no Ubuntu, so keep in mind your lineage, Ubunteros.

Now to go pick up my daughter from her science class . . .

(Larry Cafiero is one of the founders of the Lindependence Project and has just started developing software in his new home office. Watch this space.)