Carbon

Released on February 11th, 2026.

BunsenLabs Linux Carbon is a distribution offering a light-weight and easily customizable Openbox desktop. The project is a community continuation of CrunchBang Linux.
The current release is derived from Debian 13 "Trixie".

Installation Getting started Release notes
[Debian Logo]

Screenshots

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Features

The distribution consists of configuration and resource packages installed on top of Debian. There are no changes to the way the Debian base system is administrated.

There is no limit to customization: You can review desktop configurations in our forums’ Artwork & Screenshots section, and we also host several active threads on conky configuration. As an example, here’s an user-contributed walkthrough video showing what kind and style of desktop experience you may end up with.

Architectures

We offer combined live-CD and installation media for the Debian amd64 (x86-64) architectures and i386 (i686) architectures. NOTE: i386 media are no longer available from BunsenLabs Carbon.

Our main repository currently offers support for the amd64 Debian ports. Most of our packages, are in fact architecture independent, but note that BL is tested thoroughly only on amd64, so your mileage may vary on other architectures.
NOTE: Boron and Beryllium arm ports are not available for some packages, and no Carbon arm ports are built at the moment.

Community support

In general, we recommend new users to visit and sign up for our forums: It provides plenty of resources and assistance in dealing with every configuration aspect of the BL distribution, and is the main platform for user-to-user support as well as the place to voice suggestions and report bugs.

We have quite a few specialty threads, like the Conky weather+moon scripts thread.

Remember that BunsenLabs is a hobby Linux distro released under the GNU GPLv3+ license. This means there is no liability, warranty, or support, or guaranteed updates. If you need those things, choose another distro instead.

Reviews and press

Please see this forum thread for more reviews. The list below is pretty much just a random selection.