Bunsen Labs Lithium review - August 2020

I have been keeping an eye on BunsenLabs since it's inception. To say I was a fan of it's predecessor,, CrunchBang, is an understatement.

So when lithium came out, I wanted to delve into it and see how things have progressed.

It's not bad for a lightweight Linux distro. I have seen lighter, and my current favorite "light" Linux distro is Peppermint Os. 

Bunsen does an excellent job though. Very clean, sharp looking (for using openbox) and very straight forward.

If you prefer Debian over Ubuntu clockworks, then this is the better choice over Peppermint. Peppermint is easier on ram, there's no doubt. But Bunsen is no hog.

Here are some screenshots of my romp through this unique distro: (Click on them to enlarge them)

This is the vanilla Bunsen start up feel. I am not a fan of this color scheme, but it's not ugly. And I do like the quick info conky on the right side.

This is my tweaking to add color and mess with the options.

This is a screenfetch with firefox running a youtube video, to see how much ram it ate. This is not bad at all, quite reasonable on the ram here. I was quite pleased.

This is a screenfetch with the system at rest. Not bad, but Peppermint likes to sit at about 280 or less ram used. I'm not certain why Peppermint sits so wonderfully low. Still, this is very good. My bloated Ubuntu 20.04 install likes to hover at twice this ram at rest.

The default installed apps were Firefox for browser, Geany for a text editor, good ole' Thunar for file manager (I love Thunar, it's so rock solid and reliable.), and VLC for the media player.

If I were making Bunsen, i'd probably choose the same apps.

Bunsen is the easiest to configure light weight openbox set up I have ever seen. You can tweak everything with config files of coarse, but BunsenLabs goes one step further, and has GUI's (visual menus) for everything.. meaning you don't have to hunt down where that specific config file is to make changes. I love that feature.

I would not suggest bunsenlabs for a new linux initiate. But if your an old hat at Linux, love tweaking things, and especially love light tight distros or have a bit of nostalgia for ole' CrunchBang, this distro is for you.

-Denny

If you want to read up on and/or download the distro, you can do that here: https://www.bunsenlabs.org/

If you are like me and like to peruse the DistroWatch page on a distro, that's here: https://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=bunsenlabs