Installation:Storm gives you the choice of either a text-based or graphical (X) based installation. I chose the graphical installation and everything seemed to be going well, until it crashed! It got to marking the packages that are to be installed and stopped half way through. So don’t use the graphical installation!
So, next I tried using the text-based installation. It detected all of my hardware (except the sound card…) and even detected the mouse (which I haven’t seen any other distro do…). It detected and configured my Graphics card (a Creative Blaster Riva TNT2 Ultra) and Network Card (a Realtek 8139a) and even my TV card (an old Hauppauge Win TV BT848).
The Partitioning was relatively easy (probably because I’d already created the required partitions!), but might cause a few problems for inexperienced users. What was good was that I had Storm sharing a boot and swap partition with SuSE 6.4 which was installed on another partition, with no problems.
The network setup was included in the installation and was easy as long as you know your IP address and network details.
It prompts you to set up LILO which was also relatively easy as long as you know which partitions and kernels to boot for any other OS’ on your machine (it automatically sets up LILO to boot storm).
Software Content:
Storm comes with both the KDE and the Gnome desktop environments and a reasonable selection of software for both. It comes with FTP servers, Telnet Servers and the Debian distribution of Apache, but NOT a SSH server or connection software.
Storm includes a basic setup program, which can be used to set up networking and Users either on your local machine or on a remote machine over a network or the Internet that is also running Storm (as long as you know the root password!).
Although my TV card was detected there was no TV software included with Storm. The Sound Card was not detected and didn’t seem to have any tools to set it up (except a non-working version of ISAPNP) although sound software was included (Mixers, wav players etc.)
There was no Office package included (the closest thing was Kedit) which I really think should have been. I think that Storm are expecting users to download any software they require from the Internet, it would be better, for those who don’t have Internet access if they included some of the commonly needed software with the distribution (e.g. TV Card Software, Office Apps, Kernel Source, OSS or Alsa etc.).
Conclusion:
Storm certainly LOOKED good, it was not difficult to set up or use and would be good for a first-time Linux user. If Storm improved their Software content they would easily be in the same league as SuSE and Redhat . Apart from the lack of included software, this version of Storm Linux was very impressive and I look forward to reviewing the latest version very soon.