Progeny Debian 1.0 Released

martins99 writes: "Progeny was released today. It is a commercial dist based on debian but with lots of new stuff which Debian 2.2 (potato) or woody (testing) lacks like: support for 2.4, graphical installation, XFree86 4.02, glibc 2.2. Read more at www.progeny.com." Since Stormix is ailing so badly, I hope Progeny can do better...

Comments

2.4 support?

[Psiren]

Last time I looked the 2.4 kernels were in woody. In fact, I downloaded one the other day. So if this is the case I would assume all the other necessary programs have been upgraded to the relavent versions.

Alternative uses

[Grond]

One of the coolest things that can be done with Progeny is upgrade straight to "real" debian, since Progeny is (AFAIK/can tell) completely debian compatible. A simple sources.list edit and a somewhat lengthy apt-get update/upgrade later and bang! regular debian, with the benefit of a really keen graphical installer and a lot of the major packages already installed.

Even so, Progeny itself is quite cool, especially the commercial support aspects. Hopefully they can succeed where (in some sense) Storm Linux failed.

(interesting test of the strength of the apt/dpkg system: switch from progeny to unstable to stable and all the way back and see if stuff still works stably....)

For the record...

[Chris Pimlott]

Debian Woody (aka testing) does have support for 2.4 kernels, glibc 2.2 and XFree86 4.0.2.

It is correct that none of these are in Potato. However, there are unofficial packages for running 2.4 kernels and XFree86 4 in Potato, both provided by Debian developers.

Progeny

[ajakk]

I have been using Progeny Linux on my Thinkpad since RC2, and I have been very happy with it. I am starting to become a convert to apt-get, even though it does have some very odd little quirks. I think that Progeny needs a little bit of work before it becomes as user friendly as Mandrake 7.2.

Re:Progeny

[ajakk]

Apt-get is great if all of your packages come from the same place. I have had problems installing debs from other distributions (tossing WordPerfect on my laptop from my Corel distribution). I don't think that there are easy ways around the problems. You really just have to get used to how apt-get does things. I was very happy that I could upgrade from Progeny RC2 to Progeny Release (53 package updates) with one command.

Huh?

[expunged]

I don't know what debian you're using (you're probably not), but I run nothing but debian and I have kernel 2.4, glibc 2.2, and X 4.0. All from debian packages (the kernel was source, but compiled using make-kpkg).

It is nice to see a "friendlier" debian-based distro "for the masses" but that doesn't excuse people from the usual "debian is slow" and "debian only has OLD packages" crap.

-nicole

This is new?

[RubberDuckie]

Interesting, I'm running sid with a 2.4.2 kernel and XFree 4.02. Still, it will be nice to see improvements in the Debian installer. The Debian installations have always been a bit 'rough'. Once you get it working however, keeping updated with apt-get is a piece of cake (well, mostly). I figure I spend much more time keeping a working system updated, than I do installing one, so I really appreciate apt.

This should make convincing the PHB's that Debian is a viable solution vs. RedHat. Now, we have a vendor to go to for Debian as well. It's not a selling point to me, but the bosses seem to like the fact that a Linux distributions is 'supported'.

Can I go back to potato?

[game]

I mean if I upgrade to Progeny, and decide to go back to plain old potato can I do that? Or can I go back to testing(woody) from which it was created?

I'd really like to check it out, but I also want safe path back.

Re:Can I go back to potato?

[steveha]

I'd really like to check it out, but I also want safe path back.

The important thing about Progeny is this: it is Debian.

They didn't screw anything up or glue in something proprietary. It's just a particular set of Debian packages with a nice installer.

Thus, once you have Progeny set up, you can point your sources.list file at a Debian mirror, and start using apt-get against the Woody package set, and you are using Woody.

Their installer does create a few icons on the desktop that say Progeny, but if you were really gung-ho about having a non-Progeny Woody system you could delete those.

As for going back to Potato, it would be just the same as taking a Woody system back to Potato. I have never done it but it would be possible. Just point sources.list at a Potato package set, and use apt-get to get the Potato packages. You will have to force apt-get to "downgrade" since the versions of the packages will be older, but that functionality is supported. It would be something of a pain, and I don't know why you would bother; I'm running Woody unstable and I'm extremely happy with it.

steveha

How exactly do they compile Glibc 2.2 on non x86?

[Nailer]

Unless Woody and or Progeny are using Glibc 2.96, I understand this is pretty much impossible.

It is targetted as home beginner

[hub]

What the article does not show is that Progeny is aimed at simplifying Debian GMU/Linux distribution so that beginners can simply use. Consider it as a MandrakeDebian :-)

Ah and to provide commercial support on Debian based system, which is not a bad idea.

According to packages.debian.org

[autechre]

Woody(testing) does have XFree 4.02, and glibc 2.2. And while there are no kernel-image packages for 2.4, the kernel certainly works just fine (and really, I wouldn't use anything other than a custom-compiled kernel anyway).

That being said, I see Progeny as a definite Good Thing. Personally, I don't have any problems with the Debian installer, but I understand that some people do; different people approach things from different directions(thus explaining the many window managers in the *nix world). From my experience, Debian is much easier to keep up-to-date once it is installed than any RPM-based distribution, and if more people find that it's also easy to install, great.

Sotto la panca, la capra crepa

Re:Difference between .raw and .iso

[Cloud K]

XCDRoast uses .raw files... in fact, it won't see anything else. You could say they provided Progeny as .raw to avoid questions about how to record an ISO file in xcdroast - but then, everyone else in the world will be asking them how to burn a .raw file *shrug*

I wish people would agree to the same extension!
I also wish they'd stick to the same boot procedure (SysV?), but that's a different story.

Woody does in fact

[SquadBoy]

Have everything the poster listed except for the graphical installer and that is being worked on. Nonetheless good job. This will make commercial support for Debian improve which when trying to sell a client on it is an important. Thing. Also GRUB is nice very nice.

I hope it suceeds

[felipeal]

I've been using Mandrake for years now and, although it's a good distribution, it's hard to upgrade the big guys (like X 4.0.3 or kde 2.1.1). I recently tried debian 2.2 to try out the famous apt-get, but I think it's text based installation is a pain in the ass (and I'm not even a newbie - I started with slackware many years ago). In my opinion, a distro with an easy installation system and a smooth way to upgrade is the way to go. Will Progeny do it? I hope so...

Debian Installer

[wytcld]

Where the Debian installer is especially rough is if your install skids off the straight-and-narrow path it hopes to find. For instance, if it doesn't see your network card (maybe it wasn't supported in the included kernel modules) it halts setting stuff up in the middle, with no option to override this and no option to restart at that point (say, after you compile a module for the card). The maintainer replies to suggestions for improving this with "Whatever it doesn't do is purposely unsupported."

I've nothing against non-GUI installs, but I'm all against routines that are inflexible and brittle - that fail in the (not so) exceptional cases. That, and developers who think the exceptional cases are the user's fault. Difficult to walk into a client's shop to do a new install using Debian, when you know you might end up looking dumb and swearing at the machine if it happens to be hardware for which the Debian install derails; at least with Red Hat you know, despite the trade-off in long-term maintainability, you're going to look efficient as you install it. So I'd say putting a solid installation routine on the front of Debian could just be brilliant.

Here Here!

[Niscenus]

Progeny is to Debian what Mandrake is to Red Hat. Doesn't make it worse or better, and if you've been updating properly, you should be around 2.4.2 with X 4.2. In my opinion, Debian is the fullfillment of the ideals of the GNU Project, and, quite frankly, pretty darn good one. Furthermore, there ARE several groups developing a graphical install for those who are a little slower on the pick up.

Though, I guess it's hard to answer the question, "What kind of tech support does it have," with, "There are people all around the world with way too much time on their hands willing to help out on USENET and bboards scattered throughout the Linux world."
As I read at an anti-linux site*, PHB's seem to be looking for someone to sue.

*two friends of mine seem to enjoy sending me tidbits from anti-linux sites. that's not as bad as "Microsoft's PenguiNT"...
dricci.com/mspr-pnt1.shtml

Progeny IS Supreme!

[kerneljacabo]

I've been using Progeny since beta 2 on my Dell Inspiron 5000e. Yes you heard right, Dell Insipron 5000e. I tried every distro out there and sent bug reports to every company. There was a problem with X compatability with my Video Chipset. Progeny was the only company that gave a damn to work with me on fixing the bug with their distro. Frankly, I'm disappointed at Red Hat. BTW, thanks ian and branden from progeny for giving a damn to help users. PROGENY KICKS SOME SERIOUS ASS, ESPECIALLY WITH HELIX GNOME!