Besgnulinux

Reader supplied reviews for Besgnulinux Average rating 8.2 from 12 review(s) Version: 3-3 Rating: 9 Date: 2026-03-06 Country: United Kingdom Votes: 2 This is definitely one of the best Distros using the JWM window manager (Joe's Window Manager) and there aren't many. I personally also like the CROWZ Distro with the JWM Window Manager which is less well known It's extremely low on CPU usage and memory usage is only around 325mb, so it's incredible fast on low spec hardware, personally I'm using a Dell Latitude 3190 with an Intel N4120 processor 4 core processor at 1.1Ghz. Cosmetically it looks and sounds great with all the package you need like email, office package and PDF viewer. I don't personally play games but it comes with 19 games so that's an added bonus. This is definitely a Distro to keep a close eye on because Distros that use the JWM window manager aren't usually this well polished Version: 3-2 Rating: 10 Date: 2026-01-16 Votes: 1 Sigh. Yes, they've done a great job of making JWM menus and windows look good. Nice graphics. Too bad many of the "plus" apps and settings simply don't work. Take the global audio Equalizer (ALSA based) -- simply doesn't work. (For that matter, the equalizer built in to Audacious didn't seem to work or work well, either -- but I didn't pursue that further.) The "change background" app doesn't woirk, and is confusing as hell. It might be that I had to manually run my special xrandr command to set up my "portrait" mode monitor that I have above my laptop monitor in its proper rotation and location. When I entered the command, it worked (of course), but the original Besgnulinux background disappeared. The change backgound app's configuration setup is also very strange, and the suggestion to "swipe the right band" is not at all helpful. I did try installing nitrogen to put up a wallpaper, but for some reason, even THAT app won't work! There's a graphical front end to the JWM startup code block, kinda like the GUI for startup stuff in Xfce. Super, right? Wrong. It doesn't work. I put my aforementioned xrandr command in there, and it doesn't run at startup. Version: 3-1 Rating: 4 Date: 2025-11-11 Votes: 1 Sigh. Yes, they've done a great job of making JWM menus and windows look good. Nice graphics. Too bad many of the "plus" apps and settings simply don't work. Take the global audio Equalizer (ALSA based) -- simply doesn't work. (For that matter, the equalizer built in to Audacious didn't seem to work or work well, either -- but I didn't pursue that further.) The "change background" app doesn't woirk, and is confusing as hell. It might be that I had to manually run my special xrandr command to set up my "portrait" mode monitor that I have above my laptop monitor in its proper rotation and location. When I entered the command, it worked (of course), but the original Besgnulinux background disappeared. The change backgound app's configuration setup is also very strange, and the suggestion to "swipe the right band" is not at all helpful. I did try installing nitrogen to put up a wallpaper, but for some reason, even THAT app won't work! There's a graphical front end to the JWM startup code block, kinda like the GUI for startup stuff in Xfce. Super, right? Wrong. It doesn't work. I put my aforementioned xrandr command in there, and it doesn't run at startup. Many, if not all, of the special JWM app windows provided are not resizeable, which is not great for my eyesight. There's also some strangeness in the way the JWM windowing settings are done, in that say I open a psensor app (after installing it, it's not already installed), it shows up in my top monitor (fine), but if I pull it down to the bottom (laptop) monitor, it won't go back up by grabbing the window and moving it. I did find out I could move it via a right mouse click selection, but that's not intuitive and takes more clicks. The JWM panel is nice for a JWM panel, but I was hoping I could move it to the left side of the lower monitor in vertical orientation. Can't remember if JWM simply doesn't have that option, but I *think* I remember that being an option in the Besgnulinux panel setting, and it didn't work. I also tried adding a panel widget -- system info -- which I couldn't find out what it did in the first place, but after I added it, I couldn't find out how to remove it, AND eventually, there was a system monitor (?) window that popped up, and which seemed to have a one-minute auto pop-up setting, so it kept pop-up-ulating and I had to kill them all. Since I couldn't figure out how to remove the panel item, I wound up having to set the pop-up timer control to 9999 or some such so at least it would only show up during a limited test period. When I had not futzed with the monitors (and so my monitor above my laptop was topologically to the "right" of the laptop and not rotated), the "Exit" menu selection showed up on my lower/main monitor and was usable. Once I had manually run my necessary xrandr command to get the proper monitor layout, the Exit menu popped up in the TOP monitor. Fine, but NOT fine! -- when I moved my mouse up to the top monitor to click on any of the selections, once I got into the graphical area, the damn thing simply disappeared! This is all too repeatable. Lastly, for a supposedly lightweight distro, it's not when compared to some of my others. I installed the ps_mem Python app to check the memory footprint when the system starts, and it seems to be a shade under 400 MB. That's not BAD -- but compared to others where I'm also using JWM (but with tint2 for panel), such as my Q4OS distro, which also uses SystemD init, IT fires up under 290 MB. Granted, in it, I use Xterm rather than LXterminal (which I applaud the selection of), and the special TDE network systray app that's lighter than nm-applet, but that's still a lot of difference. I might revisit the distro some time from now, but at this point, it simply doesn't give me anything that other distros don't. See all 12 reader reviews of Besgnulinux...