Everyone has heard about it, and a lot of people want to install it. But as any Linux veteran can tell you, this is not a simple task. For most users, I would never recommend Linux. While it is an excellent operating system, outperforming Windows by a long way, it is not for a beginning computer user. But for those of you who are ready to delve into Linux, this is a good place to start.

Notice I said start. The distribution is easy to install, and detects most hardware without trouble. It makes startup easy if you're running a dual-boot system (both windows and linux) and is user freindly for configuration.

It doesn't come with many extras. For people more experienced at installing Linux, this probably isn't a good distribution. It does have a couple or great features. One is that is is based on Debian. This means you can extract files from the Debian distribution. That allows you to get a lot of the extras that you are probably looking for. It also supports a lot of hardware. I was surprised when it detected my video card (a voodoo 3000 AGP) and my printer (a HP 840c deskjet). But trying to install extras was a bit taxing. I finally ended up installing storm to get my devices installed and extracting most of the programs I needed from a Debian distribution.

Basically, my experience comes down to this. Before choosing a distribution you should look at 2 things. What hardware your distribution supports and what extras you need. For people just looking at learning the basics, Storm is an excellent starting point. It goes on easy and with minimal effort you can pick up quite a bit. For those of you interested in building a first class server, a different distribution is probably called for.

My last thought is on price. I did buy the software. I downloaded the ISO and installed it from my hard drive (I would not recommend this to anyone without a broadband connection. Even with my DSL connection this took 2.5 hours). When you are looking to buy Linux you are really looking to buy support. The kernal and most software you will need are free for download. At $70.00, the price seems rather steep for 60 days phone support and 90 days email (what you get with the delux edition). The $20 edition comes with 90 days email support, which is reasonable for the price.

In Summary:
This product is for either beginners or users who do not need a lot of extras. It is also really usefull if you plan to use it in conjunction with Debian.




Recommended: Yes