BunsenLabs Linux



BunsenLabs Linux was recently added to the DistroWatch database and has been one of our most requested reviews this year. For those who have not encountered the project before, the distribution's website describes BunsenLabs as follows: BunsenLabs Linux is a distribution offering a light-weight and easily customizable Openbox desktop. The current release is Hydrogen, built on top of Debian Jessie. The project is a community continuation of CrunchBang Linux The Hydrogen release of BunsenLabs (or simply Bunsen as I will refer to the distribution during this review) is essentially Debian Stable with a few customizations. They are listed on the Bunsen website as follows: Pre-configured Openbox window manager with tint2 panel and Conky system monitor

Assortment of harmonizing GTK2/3 themes, wallpapers and Conky configurations

Various configuration and application utilities to maintain this system

Additional desktop-, multimedia- and hardware-related packages come pre-installed to offer a better out-of-the-box experience. The Hydrogen release is available in 32-bit and 64-bit builds for the x86 CPU architecture. There is an extra 32-bit build which does not require PAE support in the computer's CPU, making this edition suitable for older machines. I downloaded the 64-bit build which is available as a 836MB download.



Booting from Bunsen's media brings up a menu asking if we would like to explore the distribution's live environment, run a text installer or launch a graphical system installer. Taking the live option brings up a graphical environment powered by the Openbox window manager. The default theme displays a grey background with a grey panel at the top of the screen. The panel includes a quick-launch bar on the left, a task switcher in the middle and there is a system tray on the right side of the panel. A Conky status panel sits on the right side of the display and provides data on the operating system's resource usage. We can right-click on any empty part of the screen to bring up an application menu.



After confirming the distribution was running smoothly, I looked around for a system installer, but did not find one. I rebooted and took the graphical installer option from the live media's boot menu.



Bunsen uses Debian's graphical system installer and the experience of installing Bunsen is almost identical to installing recent releases of Debian. The only technical difference I noted was that Bunsen's version of the installer did not ask me to create a password for the root account. The only other difference was visual. While Debian's version of the installer uses a red, white and grey theme, Bunsen uses a grey-on-grey theme which makes all of the buttons and elements on the screen look as though they have been disabled.





BunsenLabs Linux Hydrogen -- The system installer

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The system installer walks us through selecting our region, language and computer's hostname. We set up a user account, choose our time zone from a list and then partition the hard drive. Bunsen's installer supports both guided partitioning and manual partitioning. The manual option gives us access to ext2/3/4, Btrfs, JFS and XFS along with RAID and LVM configurations. The guided partitioning method sets us up with a ext4 partition and a swap partition with the option of adding a separate /home partition. Once our disk has been partitioned and the installer has copied its packages to our hard drive we are given the option of installing the GRUB boot loader on the storage device of our choice. The system installer then reports it has finished and we can reboot the computer to start exploring the Bunsen distribution.



Booting into Bunsen brings us to a grey-on-grey login screen. Signing into our account brings us back to the Openbox environment. The first time we sign into our account, a terminal window opens and provides a brief welcome message. The message tells us a script will run to help us set up the system. We are told we should have an active Internet connection and the sudo/admin password before beginning the customization process. At this point in the process there is no admin password (the system installer does not set one and the root account is locked) so the user needs to know that their password is the sudo password. The configuration script then warns us against adding Ubuntu PPAs to the system and tells us it is a bad idea to install newer versions of software not available in the official repositories.



The configuration script then walks us through a series of steps beginning with updating our package repository information and then installing any available security updates. The script then checks to see if we are running Bunsen on a laptop and, if not, offers to remove the power status indicator package. A similar check looks for hardware which supports PAE and offers to install an appropriate kernel. We are then given the option of installing 83MB of additional wallpapers. Since all of the wallpapers in Bunsen's default collection are grey, I happily downloaded the additional package. Next, the welcome script reports LibreOffice Writer is the only member of the LibreOffice suite installed by default and offers to install the rest of the LibreOffice applications (a 75MB download). Likewise, we are given the chance to install printer support (33MB).



The welcome script performs one step at a time, offering a new feature and then installing it before asking its next question. After the first half hour, I found myself wishing the script had asked all of its questions up front and then performed its actions in one big batch. The welcome script continues though, offering to install Java and enabling a Backports repository with newer versions of software. In my case, adding the Backports software repository failed and the script abruptly terminated after having run for about forty minutes.





BunsenLabs Linux Hydrogen -- Running Openbox with the default theme

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<< While the welcome script was running, I was exploring the Openbox environment and found a few characteristics which rubbed me the wrong way. For example, when I was trying to scroll with my computer's mouse wheel, sometimes windows would scroll as expected, but sometimes Openbox would switch me to a different virtual desktop. I found that going into the Openbox Preferences panel (accessible through the application menu) allowed me to disable extra virtual desktops and avoid the issue. I also found the ubiquitous grey theme difficult to look at and, to be honest, a bit depressing and so added a splash of colour to the theme and changed the wallpaper. Perhaps my least favourite feature of the user interface was Conky, which I always find more distracting than useful. Disabling all Conky configurations (again through the Openbox application menu) would temporarily shut down the resource monitor, but Conky always returned the next time I logged in. I decided to simply remove Conky from the system and found there were multiple conky packages installed, removing these cleared up my visual environment.





BunsenLabs Linux Hydrogen -- Using the Iceweasel web browser

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Looking through Bunsen's application menu we find a fairly standard collection of software. The Iceweasel web browser is present (Flash is not included by default), along with the Filezilla file transfer application, the Transmission bittorrent software and the HexChat IRC client. LibreOffice Writer is installed and, during the initial configuration, we have the option of adding the rest of the productivity suite. The Gnumeric spreadsheet application is present, along with the Evince PDF viewer and a calculator. The application menu includes a link to the Google Docs website which opens in Iceweasel. Further investigation turns up the VLC multimedia player and a full range of media codecs, allowing us to play a range of audio and video files. The Xfburn disc burning application is present along with the Mirage image viewer and a screen shot utility. Bunsen uses the Thunar file manager, offers us an archive manager and the htop process monitor. There are applications for setting up printers and partitioning the hard drive. Plus I found a sub-menu of links which connect us to on-line support forums, Debian's Handbook and the Arch Linux wiki. Bunsen ships with Network Manager to help us get on-line and systemd version 215. In the background we find version 3.16 of the Linux kernel.



Exploring and using the applications provided, I found the default programs all worked as expected. I was able to get on-line, add printers to my system, edit documents and watch funny cat videos on YouTube. The only item in the Bunsen application menu that did not seem to function properly was a program called "About Bunsen Alternatives". Launching this program would open an empty window with no content. I'm not sure what this program was supposed to do, but it didn't do anything (good or bad) when I ran it.





BunsenLabs Linux Hydrogen -- Installing software updates through Synaptic

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Should we need additional software, or if we want to install security updates, we can turn to the Synaptic graphical front-end for package management. Synaptic presents us with software categories and filtering options on the left side of the window and a list of low-level software packages on the right that meet our search criteria. We can click a box next to packages to mark them for installation, removal or updating. I generally found Synaptic worked quickly and without problems. I think newcomers might find it difficult to navigate Synaptic as we usually need to know the name of a package we want to install, but otherwise the graphical front-end worked well.



One feature of Bunsen I enjoyed was the distribution's alternative approach to installing software. In the application menu we find categories of software, such as Graphics or Network. In these categories we find launchers for available applications and we also find a sub-menu called Install which provides a list of programs in the category we could install. For example, in the Graphics category there is an Install sub-menu which contains "GIMP". Clicking this item installs the GNU Image Manipulation Program for us. Likewise, in the Network menu we find an Install sub-menu where we can click buttons to install Opera and the Google Chrome web browser. These menu short-cuts made it easy to quickly install additional software without the need for opening a new window to manage packages.



I tried running Bunsen in two environments, a VirtualBox virtual machine and on a desktop computer. When run in VirtualBox everything worked smoothly, but my screen resolution was somewhat limited. I was able to install VirtualBox guest modules from the default repositories and doing so allowed me to run Bunsen with full screen resolution. When running on the desktop computer, Bunsen performed well. The operating system properly set up a network connection, sound worked out of the box and my display's full resolution was used. Bunsen performed quickly in both environments and the Openbox window manager was pleasantly responsive. The distribution was fairly light in memory, using approximately 225MB of RAM when logged into the Openbox environment.





BunsenLabs Linux Hydrogen -- Exploring Openbox and Conky settings

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Conclusions



When I first started using BunsenLabs Linux I did not enjoy the experience. At first, it felt like installing Debian with a depressing theme and fewer features. The initial installation and configuration steps felt overly long and complicated. The Openbox environment lacked the features of fuller desktop environments while, at the same time, offering unwanted distractions such as Conky and extra virtual desktops. It would be fair to say the first two or three hours with Bunsen were unpleasant for me.



However, there was definitely a turning point during my trial. Around the start of the second day -- once I had a more colourful theme in place, the Conky packages had been banished and I had got into the habit of installing software I wanted from the application menu -- there was a point where I began to enjoy Bunsen. The distribution's hardware and multimedia support were top notch, performance and the interface's responsiveness were excellent and the applications available all worked properly. Openbox has enough configuration tools to make it flexible without being overwhelming. What really sold me on the distribution though was the way Openbox stayed out of my way, a feature I feel Debian's default desktop does not offer.



At the end of my trial, I still had some mixed feelings. As much as Bunsen grew on me, I couldn't help but feel the experience felt very much like installing Debian and adding the Openbox window manager as a session option. While Bunsen takes care of that step for us, it also adds several extra steps during the initial configuration that made me feel like going with plain Debian and installing Openbox might have been faster and easier.



In the end, I did grow to like Bunsen with its clean, fast user interface. I like the distribution's tweaks to Debian such as adding sudo and providing application menu installers. I think the initial welcome script should probably either be automated or ask all its questions up front and then go to work in the background. It took a while for me to get the interface looking the way I wanted it to and less like the inside of a mine shaft, but once I did the distribution provided a good set of default applications and desktop functionality. * * * * * Hardware used in this review



My physical test equipment for this review was a desktop HP Pavilon p6 Series with the following specifications: Processor: Dual-core 2.8GHz AMD A4-3420 APU

Storage: 500GB Hitachi hard drive

Memory: 6GB of RAM

Networking: Realtek RTL8111 wired network card

Display: AMD Radeon HD 6410D video card