 Whenever I take a look at a Linux distribution one of the questions I asked to myself is what does this bring to the table that other distributions don't and I always try to find that one thing Because every Linux distribution is created for a reason like Linux meant split off from Ubuntu for a reason Elementary OS was created for a reason manjaro was created for a reason you get the idea So when I look at one of these off the road very small distributions I asked myself why does this exist and Usually for the most part I can Discover that purpose and it doesn't have to be a unique purpose Let's write if you want to create your own arch-based distribution Even if it's exactly the same as all the other arch-based distributions out there. That's fine with me That's a good enough reason to do it as long as you're not making odd claims about how this is going to be the distribution that changes everything and You got to just got to try this because it's going to be the most amazing Linux distribution you've ever tried as long as you're not doing That I'm okay with you making your own distribution Even if it doesn't have a unique purpose for being so today I'm going to be taking a look at an arch-based distribution and this arch-based distribution is called stormer west and Going into this. I wanted to answer the question of why does this exist? And I think that at the end of the day This is going to be one of those distributions that exists in the realm of a lot of other arch-based distributions in that it's meant to make arch as easy to install as possible and When it comes to that goal Stormer West has done a really good job another thing that it does a really good job of is that it has some Applications that are installed by default that are actually pretty unique like I've very rarely seen these applications Installed by default on a distro. So what we're going to do today is I'm going to talk about the Installation of storm west and then we'll go through the system just a little bit and talk about what makes it different At least in some subtle ways from other Linux distributions. So let's go ahead and jump in so what you're seeing now is a Fast-forward through the installation of stormer west and the reason why I'm doing it this way is because the installation is really nothing to write Home about it. It's not bad nor good. It's just a calamari's installer With one extra page where you can select some software to install prior to the installation of the distra Or during the installation of the distra. That's really all it is There's nothing here that it stands out amongst the rest of Dozens of arch based distributions to also use calamari's again, that's not a ding That's just kind of the way it is. This is installing arch Linux the easy way, right? You're using calamari's to install arch Linux and for the most part, that's a good thing to do So once you get past the installer, you're presented with a login screen that looks like this now I believe this is light DM now one of the things that I don't really care for right off the top is that Despite it actually knowing your username. Oh, well, I actually see I didn't even know that if you click on that It it takes you that because if you're actually down here It makes you type in your username and this is the default thing This is what shows up by default you have to actually click on this and I didn't even know that so Learning right up to that so I type in my password and The one thing you'll see upon boot up is this uses XFC as default desktop environment and It is somewhat customized So you'll notice that they have deemed bash and they have a profile for the XFC terminal That is fairly unique and I'm gonna fix that display resolution that way it's full screen and you can see by default It runs the latest of everything remember this is arch Linux basically it even says it's arch Linux Interestingly, they changed the ASCII art, but they didn't change the OS name But anyways, it doesn't really matter. They have the latest version of the kernel bash 5.1 XFC 4.16 all the latest stuff, but again, this is our clinic. So that's kind of what you'd expect now in terms of Memory if you care about that kind of thing You're gonna look at about 601 megabytes of RAM used. That's about normal for XFC So once you get to this stage one of the things that I found very interesting is that you don't get a welcome screen one of the things that This distribution kind of proclaims itself as is being a new user friendly distribution But there's no welcome screen, but there is a welcome screen It just doesn't come up by default which is very confusing to me Like if we go into the menu here and click on StormOS system tool this is the welcome screen and The thing is is that I know that they don't call it a welcome screen because it's not called that It's called the StormOS utilities program or in the menu It's called StormOS system tool whichever that you want to call it I call it the welcome screen because it has things that you'd want to do right upon boot up You know refresh the mirrors do the system updates check for a you update a you are updates Refresh the arch key ring which I'm not sure why you'd want that as number four Usually when you update your system the arch key ring should be first thing because that updates the GPG keys And you can't actually update arch as far as I'm aware without doing that first So I'm not sure why that's number four could be wrong, but again This is the welcome screen, but it doesn't pop up by default It does have some interesting choices that it gives you to do certain things So like install team viewer not something that I've ever seen before not something that I would ever want for myself But if you use team viewer, it's interesting that there's a button here for you to do that I'm not sure again why that's here when you could install team viewer I'm pretty sure in that list of software in the installer why it's in both places again Doesn't really matter, but definitely something that I noticed and there are some other things here that are for installing things like Nvidia packages in order to use like VMs and stuff like that and then The I'm not actually sure what I to see tools are or what LS HW is actually LS HW is the tool To give you hardware information I think again an interesting choice to put here right up front not something that I've Ever seen before like this is like I'd never heard of LS HW before I had to look it up So yeah, it's there and it's cool again I'm not sure why this here isn't given to you by start up Like it feels like this is something that should pop up that start up at least on the first boot, right? But it doesn't now it does have other tabs So you can install things like steam heroic launcher Lutris proton GE Mangle HUD and bottles all from right here You can also install other things like flame shot and transmission and Thunderbird right from here You can install on the office from here the media stream installer You can also launch some settings panels from here as well we also have things for printer and cups drivers donations and The arts university which is a place where you would to get information and support So things like the arch wikis link to here the arch website some of the commands for the specific version of Linux you can get here as well. So this is welcome app, but again doesn't start up by default So I actually find this tool really good. There are some Weird choices like I'm not sure why some of this stuff, you know Like why is team viewer here to begin with? It's a choice that I would not necessarily have made myself, but I'm guessing that it's here because Again, this is a new user focus distro And it's possible that they're expecting you to be helping someone else to install this So you would tell whoever you're helping to install this to Start up the storm OS tweak tool or whatever it's called do seven or five So it installs team viewer for them Then you can take control of their computer and show them how to do stuff Maybe that's the rationale. I'm not actually sure it seems a little niche for me, but again, you know, whatever So that is that Now there are other programs that are automatically installed So and some of these are things that I've never seen before Installed by default on a Linux distribution. So we get gimp by default, which is always nice We have Firefox and Thunderbird as our internet tools VLC and simple screen recorder are both here simple screen recorder is not something that you see very often Installed by default so you get Abbey word as the word processor Which is again a choice that I've never actually seen made before Usually you see Libre office sometimes open office sometimes only office Never seen Abbey word before I mean I've heard of it before but I never used it things like planner are also here Like this is a elementary OS app. This is primarily Developed for the elementary OS platform. It's really good It's got a front-end for to do us which is something that I've always wanted to use But it doesn't work with all well and window managers So I've never been able to use it, but it's actually quite nice for a to-do list application and very very powerful Again, never seen it installed by default on something outside of elementary OS And even then it's not installed by default there We also have a something called Osmo, which is a like a planning personal planner Which again, I've never even heard of this application before That's something that you know installed. I've just never seen before usually. It's something like K organizer or You know calendar, you know is what you normally see here and we have some other things here as well So there are some things for playing and downloading movies Which I'm not actually sure what these things are and I don't really have a way to test them because I don't have any movies or anything on here I don't know what kind of movies this accepts in order to download them Maybe maybe it's a front-end for like YouTube DL or something I'm not sure it doesn't have any as far as I'm aware like about, you know options here So I'm not sure what those actually are but again things that I've never seen before The rest of the stuff is going to be just your typical XFCE fare So you're getting all the XFC settings and stuff like that all the traditional ways of managing the XFCE desktop environment like the themes and stuff like that. So if you open up the Settings manager, this is the standard XFC window manager now a lot of distributions will add stuff to this and This distribution is no different. So they've added the storm more system tool So if you ever need to get back to that and you don't remember that it's in the menu Or you maybe you removed it from the menu you could get to it from here Let's go ahead and briefly take a look at the theming which is done in appearance So this has quite a few themes installed by default. So there's one called Colloid that has several different variants I believe that mostly that's just going to change the buttons up there at the top But it does give you a lot of options if you happen to like that theme, which I have to say It's very in a very attractive theme. It's definitely better than the default XFC stuff So well done on that. I'm not sure what these things are. Is this elementary elementary style sheet grape lime? I'm not excited. I'm not sure what if we Go back and then we open up like the the open up funer here I'm not sure what makes that elementary, but it's an interesting theme very flat, but you know kind of cool Anyways, other than that That is what you get with storm OS There's not a lot of extra stuff here outside of the things that I've shown you and it's very minimal so there is a problem with storm OS and that is The Documentation so if we go and I saved this for last because I didn't want to ding this Distribution too hard because it's actually kind of cool But the biggest problem that they have is all of their distribution all of their documentation is here on Source forge. So this is the documentation that you get and there is Something here that I've not paid much attention to and that is the storm OS repo installer I'm assuming what that does is it adds a Arch repo to Pac-Man.com I'm assuming that that's what that does again I don't know because the documentation isn't great. So if we go back here to this And we zoom in just a little bit so I can actually read that because it's black and white And that's always hard for me to read most of this stuff here is just the updates from the developer and There's no organization. I guess chronological sure But there's a lot of updates and you'd have to read through all of them and there doesn't seem to be a place For you to find out what that repo thing is if we go to the actual storm OS website Again, there's not much here in terms of documentation and it's still I've not been able to Find a written place where it explains what that repo thing is or if you're supposed to use it I have no clue, right? But really the Documentation is the biggest downside I have of this whole distribution. There's just Not a lot there and what is there seems to be mostly just the updates like the Updates from the developer and again, that's not a big ding like that's there are a ton of distributions out there that are much more lacking in any documentation like they have none whatsoever and This is just arch Linux. So if you ever really need documentation, you could just use the arch wiki So that's not a big deal. But again, it's just something that I noticed Also, I don't know if you notice this or not, but they have themed Firefox, which is kind of cool It's not something again that you see very often usually they don't take the time to theme Firefox put their own custom theme in for that. That's kind of cool that they did that. So Very cool. Anyway, so that is storm OS if you have thoughts on this You can leave those in the comment section below. It's a very good arch based distribution If that is something that interests you go ahead and give this a try You can follow me on Twitter at the Linux cast You can follow me on mastodon and all my other social media networks You can find those links in the video description You can support me on patreon at patreon.com slash Linux cast like all these fine people. Thanks to all of my current patrons I really truly do appreciate every single one of you all of you have supported me throughout the last year and a half And I truly do appreciate it if you would like to support me on patreon You can again do so at patreon.com slash Linux cast. I truly do appreciate all that support So thank you for watching. I'll see you next time