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Ubuntu Beware: Installing Debian with Anaconda
Chris writes "Progeny Linux does Debian one step better. If you like Ubuntu you'll love Progeny. A slick GNOME desktop, a solid Debian core, and the Anaconda installer have made Progeny my new desktop of choice. Progeny has also recently become part of the Linux Core Consortium (LCC) to implement Linux Standard Base (LSB) 2.0. Watch your back Ubuntu for Progeny's new 'Progeny Debian 2.0 Developer Edition RC1' release. At OSDir we just had to install this distro, and take some screenshots. Our screenshot tour will take you from boot, through the installation, to the desktop. Then we'll have a look at the taskbar, menus, system configuration, and a few of the newly added features of this great distro."
Looking at those screenshots, it's interesting how the installer, for instance, is essentially copied from RedHat. I suppose that's the pleasure of OSS - you can take the best of what's around, and if you know a better way to put it all together - do it.
Pardon me but I don't see much of a difference here . .
1) Debian
2) Gnome
3) Easy installation
4) Profit?
So it's got LSB standardization - Yay. With an hour of work I bet you could turn either into the other. Why the hard sell? I'm not a fanboy of either but bickering about distros does nothing but fragment the userbase at large.
In other news, by the time I'm done writing this someone will probably have posted why gentoo is superior to both of these.
Progeny seems like it's a fairly good distro, but for me, I'd rather stick with Ubuntu if I'm going to stray from a pure Debian install.
Progeny's site (btw, a link in the article would have been nice, it's Progeny) calls themselves "the linux platform company" and has a very conservative, professional (in a business sense) look. That's not for me. Ubuntu, on the other hand, is very human oriented. Looking at their site (Ubuntu), the first thing they do is explain the name as, ""Ubuntu" is an ancient African word, meaning "humanity to others". Ubuntu also means "I am what I am because of who we all are". The Ubuntu Linux distribution brings the spirit of Ubuntu to the software world.".
From a pure philosophically aesthetic standpoint, Ubuntu is far more appealing to me than Progeny. Ubuntu is great, it's Debian (like Progeny) and it stays in parity with the most current GNOME releases. Anaconda is one of the last things on my checklist of why I'd switch distros.
That's not to say I dislike Progeny, or that I wouldn't want to run it. In fact, I probably wouldn't have made any of these points had the article not been so aggressive towards Ubuntu.
This isn't like your standard corporate system where you have to root for your competitors to lose. With this diversity, we all win. Good job, and best wishes to the Progeny team. Maybe some day I'll try your distro.
For now, though, it's Ubuntu for me.
The article says 'with anaconda'... Anaconda is the redhat-used installed for their distro. Also used by gentoo and fedora.
any humans install this yet ? the screenshot borgs dont dole out any real info ;) j/k
does it have nice "control panels" like mandrake,
suse and mepis have to setup various hardware and service options ?
selinux ? support options ? apt-get and debian source compatibility ?
visit the site right? already there. I'll let you know what I find..
ISOs
http://archive.progeny.com/progeny/linux/iso-i386
from the progeny website:
"aims to provide an unmatched "out of the box" environment for software
developers building applications for the Java, Mono/.NET and LAMP platforms."
Here's their actual download page for the ISOs, and the distro description page. It mentions a bit more about what you're getting -- for one, this is RC-1 (not the release yet). More detail: I'm probably going to try it out (I'm a Java and LAMP developer..); I might wait for the release, though.
>> "This isn't like your standard corporate system where you have to root for your competitors to lose. With this diversity, we all win."
Geez, I bet you feel so warm and fuzzy all over. Remind me never to hire you.
Get a clue: Ubuntu is a product of the Canonical Corporation, as in "Corporation". It is backed by South African Mark Shuttlesworth, a rather wealthy guy you may have heard about when he bought a $20 million joyride to orbit. I have no reason to doubt his sincerity about all this "ubuntu philosophy" stuff, but it is a common advertising hook in South Africa.
Linux distributions should be judged on their technical and aesthetic merits, not on the pseudo-philosophical image they project for PR purposes. (You do understand that Progeny's site is designed to appeal to the market they want to sell to, and that Ubuntu's site is designed to appeal to people like you? You're being manipulated in either case.)
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
Ubuntu has a pretty transparent development process (yeah for mailing lists and development sources lists for apt) and is promising a regular (and reasonably frequent) release cycle.
I don't see mention of anything like this for Progeny yet. So its less attractive then Ubuntu to me right now.