(no subject)

[Jason Kennerly]

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__
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