Problems noted with the STORM Rain Release: * The installer uses the gpmdata setup by default, regardless of what kind of mouse you have. Thus, if GPM is unable to see your 3 button mouse, but it has worked just fine with X in the past, your middle button will not work. I fixed this by restoring the settings from my old install. Running gpm with the repeater option on also breaks X. * Despite correctly identifying my video card as having an S3Virge chipset, the installer went ahead and picked the SVGA server! The version it used was 3.3.5, one I know to NOT work properly with this card. I had to download and install XF86_S3V - I got version 3.3.6. Version 3.3.6 of XF86 has been available for glibc for quite some time; the only reason I had experience with using XF86_SVGA 3.3.5 is because it is or was the server of choice for a libc5 system with a Trident 3DImage975 card - my other box. Note that the XF86_SVGA 3.3.5 server almost works with my S3 video, and it did work well enough to complete the install. * The installer doesnt install the PINE package. Hence, no PICO editor! Laugh all you want, but if the idea of Storm is to have a user-friendly install, and it sure as hell seems to be from how easy it was, forcing users to use vi as their editor is a HORRID mistake. Besides, I never learned vi, I can barely remember its quit command; I've been using jed for programming for quite some time. * the /usr/local/src directory is not created, even though a compiler is installed by default. * Far too many applications and other crucial components are installed with the ownership granted to the user, rather than root. Storm's install asks you to define a user and password at the same point it asks you to define a root password. * There is no support for libc5 binaries by default! * Once, the install crashed at the very tail end during the creation of crucial boot information. I was never able to recover that install since I am not familiar with the operation of the /boot directory, nor the newer versions of LILO that require it (LILO sure is different than it was in Slackware 3.0 ... whoa!). It is my belief that this crash occured primarily because the install failed to do a reboot after altering the partition table of my IDE Hard Disk - this is a critical that cannot be overlooked. * The shipped kernel 2.2.14 seems to have major issues with me changing the text mode. I am recompiling a 2.2.17 right now, it is currently my belief that they failed to add support for reasonable text modes in the kernel. * The installed compiler 2.7.2.3 makes BLOATED kernels. My first attempt at recompile suggested I use modules or bzImage. I had specified to use bzImage AND modules for everything I didnt anticipate using frequently, and had specified modules for SCSI as well since I will be attempting to get a scanner working on this box (fun!) I feel it is critical to upgrade the compiler to 2.95.2 before doing much of any customization on this system. In other words, the kernel version (2.2.x) and the compiler version (2.7.x) arent well suited to each other. * Directory colors arent very well setup. /etc/DIR_COLORS is missing. * There is no termcap file installed. I noticed this while installing pico. The library function to support it is also missing. I copied in my old libc5 version after putting in the most recent version of libc5 (as suggested in the glibc-2 FAQ) * sudo is missing * "." is not included in the default search path! * The GNOME applications dont run from the menu with the GNOME install. The KDE aps worked from the menus, under that install, however. * The shutdown script writes to CMOS (eek!) in order to update the system date. My system now thinks its 4AM. Suffice to say, something is seriously wrong here. * I downloaded and installed Netscape 4.76 for Linux-2.2. Libraries are missing! libstdc++-libc6.1.1-so.2 isnt there! * Netscape 4.76 for linux-2.0 complains about libraries until the LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable is properly defined. Storm Linux does not do this. (edit /etc/profile. I use a script that generates these variables based on the contents of /etc/ld.so.conf) * Then, Netscape still cant load libg++.so.27! At first I was really worried about this, until I realized that the symlink to libg++.so.272 is simply missing. Same for libstdc++.so.27. Unfortunately, after fixing this, it complains about libm.so.5 being missing. This is a libc5 program, and when the old libraries are installed, Netscape simply segfaults. Drat. I was beginning to understand why a great number of Linux users scoff at Netscape. Unfortunately, the problems arent with Netscape! I never had these sort of problems with the old libc5 system, which I messed up quite severely attempting to add glibc support. Right now, after fussing with glibc-2.2 for a week and succeeding only in almost ruining my box (I still have the old root config on disk, in a different directory) and completely ruining its compiler, I have come to the conclusion that glibc, at the present moment, is a Bad Thing for anyone wanting to put together an "Easy to install" linux distribution. Right now, I am seriously thinking "Easy to install" will mean, unfortunately, "what everyone else is using", or by the numbers, RedHat... Attempting to install Netscape manually from the .deb's revealed that not only was Netscape not installed in my installation, but a GREAT variety of other .deb's were not as well, like MIME support for example. Clearly, the people at Stormix feel that if I will not be using Communicator 4.6, I have no need for MIME. I tried to install a few of the not installed .deb's Netscape's deb required, only to discover they required uninstalled deb's as well! I chose to reinstall from scratch at this point. Guess what... the Netscape included with the distribution dies because it cannot load a shared library - the exact same reason Communicator 4.76 couldnt load! So much for my reinstall. To make matters worse, partitions other than root are not umounted. I suspect something is seriously flawed with how the Storm installer mounts partitions: running "mount" with no arguments on the commandline doesnt show anything other than proc mounted. Yet there they are, quite obviously mounted in /target and any directories under target specified. KDE and Gnome are pretty, but it wouldnt be too hard to set up fvwm with the Goodstuff module such that dropdown menus appear below the Goodstuff bar's icons (my old setup) in a manner than any user could use. Do file managers, and the other tools really need to be exclusive to one window manager or the other? Im just itching to get my hands on the source to fvwm, so I can add it to the list. I miss my 25 virtual desktops that I could switch between with extreme ease, in less than the blink of an eye. This will definitly be the next step after getting a browser working. -- jkenner @ mindspring . com__ I Support Linux: _> _ _ |_ _ _ _| Working Together To <__(_||_)| )| `(_|(_)(_| To Build A Better Future. |