ArchBang Realizes i3 Was A Mistake, Switches Back To Openbox

ArchBang is one of the original Arch-based Linux distros, going back about 14 years. It started life as an easy way to install Arch Linux with the Openbox window manager. A few years ago, they switched to i3 and people hated it...so now its back to Openbox!
REFERENCED:
► archbang.org/
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[@JonathonFailsAtLife]

Crunchbang 11 was my first distro that I ran for more than a year and unabashedly loved. Broke my heart when it was discontinued.

[@penguin2137]

its continuation - Crunchbang++ is still around

[@AceOfBased]

I hope that you are aware of Crunchbangplusplus? CBPP is keeping the spirit alive.

[@thetapheonix]

It still exists. There is also a fork of it called Bunsen Labs.

[@AceOfBased]

@@thetapheonix I prefer #!++ over BunsenLabs, but BL would be my second choice.

[@Hoowwwww]

@@thetapheonix bunsen does their own thing, the true spriritual successor is crunchbang plus plus aka #!++

[@kj_sh604]

HAHA! I remember using ArchBang to "install Arch" back at around 2013 since they had a guided installer that you can run in a terminal. I would set my partitions, run the installer, reboot, remove Openbox, and then install awesomeWM or Xfce 😆. It was still around the time that I was scared to install Arch the traditional way 😅. Good times! Archbang and Crunchbang will always have a special place in my heart as well 😌.

[@LaGarzaResistente]

Great review, as always. Greetings from Argentina

[@Dean-vd5wr]

Great video once again.

[@skelebro9999]

Reject i3. Return to Openbox.

[@dustanddeath3985]

Reject Openbox. Return to crowquill and parchment.

[@AceOfBased]

Openbox is a way of life.

[@HirschyKiss]

Been using i3 pretty much since I started using Linux basically. I enjoy it, definitely can tell it's not aging well. I definitely want to switch to sway and Hyprland, but I have Nvidia and I can't be asked to figure that out along with Nixos

[@helloimatapir]

How is it not aging well? i3 is one of the best window managers out there. DT doesn't like it because it's a manual tiler.

[@drishalballaney6590]

yess archbang was my first experience with arch linux and specially back then when the internet connection was a bit weak to install arch from the default mirrorlist, archbang was the perfect way to install arch

[@jakubvokoun81]

Oh, I loved #!...

[@Ferran-Gnu-Linux]

Pretty Crunchbang but I prefeer Arch base + Openbox + tint2 built from comman line and after set it by my own.

[@EXTRA---LARGE---FARVA]

The default wallpaper looks like some random dude in the Ozarks took a picture of his backyard.

[@marsdrums6298]

When selecting the install procedures, if you enter in "1-10", you won't have to go through the menu one by one. It just runs all of those stems for you automatically with 1-10 then when you're done, d ends the installer portion and you can reboot.

[@rtheben]

Thank you Derek!!! I’m down on my like but you made my day

[@bender2033]

High 5 if your first distro was on a stack of 3.5" floppies !

[@dustanddeath3985]

1999 Slackware, I think it took 20+ floppies to install on my 133mHz Pentium III Gateway tower.

[@RoelandJansen]

Minix was at 5.25"

[@cameronbosch1213]

I wish I could say that. My first distro was Ubuntu 10.04, which I used until 11.04 and then had to switch back to Winblows because my high school wouldn't let me use Linux because there was no MiCrOsHaFt WoRd on Linux. In college, I went back to Linux in 2018, and almost gave up because GNOME 3 was so bad. Fortunately, after Microshaft Winblows 11 was released, I made the jump over to Arch Linux (EndeavourOS) with KDE Plasma and I prefer it over Winblows 11. Because we all know Winblows 11 copied KDE Plasma and is the most bloated KDE Plasma Linux distro! 😂

[@flow5718]

Hey DT, do you think Arch and other rolling release distros would go extinct with the rise of Distrobox and Toolbox? Now it's possible to have a stable LTS distro or even an immutable one and still run bleeding edge software from any rolling/unstable distro in its own container at the same time. This is a game changer for gaming, development, and pretty much anything else that goes beyond basic usage without cluttering up the host machine. Gaming performance is only 1-2% *at most* lower on the container for example and the container is tightly integrated with the host unlike traditional VMs.

[@Plyply99]

If rolling release distro's went extinct no need for distrobox.

[@mrbloodyhyphen-5657]

I mean if rolling release distros were to go extinct then so would the option to install the latest packages from the repositories of these distros from Distrobox because if there is no Arch Linux why would there be Arch linux repos with the latest packages. So I don't think they'll be going anywhere considering Arch users are a large number of Desktop Linux users

[@flow5718]

@@mrbloodyhyphen-5657 You're right, Arch and other base distros would stick around, but I doubt the long term viability of downstream distros based on these base distros.

[@exnihilonihilfit6316]

@@mrbloodyhyphen-5657 Yes, we already read that comment, by Plyply99 -- in 100 words less.

[@tambuchalinux]

Arch has practically all the packages you will ever need. I don't use Flatpaks or Distrobox on Arch for that reason. I would use Distrobox in Debian though. But Arch isn't going anywhere any time soon. The main problem with rolling distros is their tendancy to break sometimes. But btrfs-tools helps to deal with that problem.

[@muchospantaloons]

i still have crunchbang on a solar pc (actually is a demo machine of a vaporware that i forced them to send after getting fooled) and i actually do not get frustrated by its non tile wm cuz terminator does the tiling kind of split thing by itself maybe a good balance to deal with other gui programs

[@dromedda6810]

I3 was my first tiling window manager, and at the time it felt alright. but after switching to awesomewm i3 feels clunky

[@reklistube]

Can you do some performance comparisons between regular arch and cachyos?

[@arghya_333]

Changing the wallpaper using the terminal. Welcome to the Linux world.

[@keit99]

Well These are simplistic Windows Manager. Of course you need the command line. (On your typical Systems that isn't the case)

[@tailsorange2872]

Hey DT, are you an open box? Because all I see is a DistroTube that is willing to be open minded! (Pun intended)

[@imrichmorvay2227]

I had problem with install on m y new lenovo Yoga. terminal alacritty not responding for keyboard entry is a lot off crap. after i installed archlinux with openbox that was all ok

[@RHTORAS]

Archbang was famous because it offered openrc init.

[@oromos]

REAL

[@tambuchalinux]

The Arch Linux install script kinda makes Archbang obsolete in its current form. But if they took notes from Mabox and displayed how awesome Openbox can be configured, Archbang would be more appealing to me. Not sure why Mabox is based on Manjaro rather than regular Arch though. Unfortunately for me, Mabox did not install the proprietary Nvidia drivers properly last time I tried it. But Mabox is the most beautiful Openbox distro I've seen to date!

[@AceOfBased]

Mabox is bloated, too much stuff going on. ArchLabs did it the right way, if we are going to compare. Best Openbox distros right now is Crunchbangplusplus, BunsenLabs and Lilidog, non of them are Arch-based just saying.

[@tambuchalinux]

@@AceOfBased I take it you are a fan of the really minimal distros. I am too, but the work and effort put into the Mabox esthetics is much more, compared to creating something with far less packages.

[@AceOfBased]

@@tambuchalinux Yeah that is true, I am. It is impressive what Mabox have done, I give them that, but do you really need all that stuff? Honestly? Mabox used to be much more lightweight, which should be the main reason for using Openbox, my opinion.

[@still_skeptical]

@@AceOfBased And Archbang is a great jumping off point for ricing your own config.

[@zeebpc]

is this lighter than lubuntu for a 15 year old laptop?

[@still_skeptical]

Almost guarantee it is.

[@NekoiNemo]

Isn't i3 the best window manager, because it's one of the few that doesn't tell you how your windows should be arranged and lets you, the user, decide that?

[@bender2033]

Are you meaning the difference between tiling wm vs floating wm?

[@NekoiNemo]

@@bender2033No, tiling wms, just ones that are good, not the crap that forces you to use specific layouts

[@tylerdean980]

It all depends on your perspective, to me it's just a waste of keypresses and brain cycles, so dynamic window management is better for me, options exist because not everyone likes the same things.

[@NekoiNemo]

@@tylerdean980You can save custom layouts in i3, you don't need to "waste" keypresses and braincycles to recreate them every time...

[@adjusted-bunny]

With the words of Chris Titus this would be a useless distro and I agree. Why not just installing Arch and then install whatever you like?

[@cameronbosch1213]

Many Arch based distros are indeed not really useful (especially Manjaro, holy heck that distro is BAD), but there are a few, like SteamOS 3 and later & my current daily driver EndeavourOS, that do have value. Steam OS is what the Steam Deck uses, so of course it has value, because it's used by a major company on their hardware that is being sold to consumers! EndeavourOS's GUI installer (based on Calamares) has been much more stable and usable than Arch's archinstall script, which constantly failed to install a working system in KVM or VirtualBox. Not to mention that the community around EndeavourOS is one of the better ones in the Linux space. I still wouldn't recommend EndeavourOS or Arch proper to beginner users, there's other distros like Tuxedo OS or Pop!_OS that I would recommend over Fedora or even Ubuntu and definitely over Arch for a beginner, but for users who want a near stock Arch Linux experience but wants a quicker and more reliable install with a few extras like yay and paru as well as Nvidia drivers (🖕 to Nvidia) on the ISO.

[@helloimatapir]

Chris Titus is useless. Easily the worst Linux KZbinr.

[@drkwrk5229]

Distribution, I dont think distrobution is a word.

[@darthcabs]

You didn't think of checking the RAM consumption?

[@h0rnedfi3nd]

I just don't see the point of these "distros". These can at best be called spins,but not distros. A distro to me is arch,Debian,gentoo, the rest are scripts or some installers,but they are not distros. The most interesting arch spin would be InstantOs,the rest are just very meh.

[@pw1187]

Yea that's 99% of distros the vast majority are just tweaked desktop environments from the main 4 distros

[@ForeverZer0]

I would estimate that 98% or more of all distro could be accomplished by running a trivial bash script after installing the base system. This was literally how I managed Arch installs before it shipped with its own installer. It takes very little effort to install some packages, copy some wallpapers and preset configs to tweak something. All these distros shipping an entire ISO just so thet can put their own "brand" on something is silly to me. Occasionally you might find one that ships with some custom software, but it would just as easily run on the base system, so even that is a moot point.

[@dustanddeath3985]

@@ForeverZer0 distros are both real and arbitrary, because use cases are both real and arbitrary.

[@ForeverZer0]

@@dustanddeath3985 I don't understand what that is supposed to mean.

[@thetapheonix]

Slackware, Opensuse, and Fedora would like a word with you about that.

[@Tech-NO-City]

Im a failed programming engineer

[@whatevermait1]

run gcc 🙃

[@francoisbechet]

We don't care if you don't like i3 boomer.

[@tylerdean980]

Manual tilers and their consequences have been a disaster for mankind

[@DityoManob]

Hey DT, STOP doing these!

[@AceOfBased]

Why should he?

[@tylerdean980]

​@@AceOfBasedthe Linux cast put out a video saying most distro reviews are trash so now a portion of the community parrots that narrative

[@exnihilonihilfit6316]

Hey, DT, _I_ , the center of the Universe and the entire purpose of its existence, don't find _every_ video you publish desirable to me, so stop doing those and just publish videos which _I_ , the center of the Universe and the entire purpose of its existence, want. *OK?*

[@exnihilonihilfit6316]

Oh, also: kzbin.info/www/bejne/eGLadpmfrNt7idk _Are Distro Reviews Pointless? Are They HARMFUL? (Rant Incoming!)_ Nov 22, 2022

[@AceOfBased]

@@tylerdean980 Yeah saw that one. TLC and the parrots is wrong, I'm using a distro right now and it is fantastic for my needs. DT made a video not long ago called "Distros...They Do Matter!", and he's right, maybe the parrots should watch that one too and then make up their minds. Not everyone wants to build everything from scratch or even got the time to learn all the ins and outs, and if they do it is still time consuming. This is something some don't seem to understand.

[@garth56]

Lol this is so funny 🙂