The beta release of Progeny Debian 2.0 Developer Edition is now available. “This version of Progeny Debian was built using the new Anaconda for Debian, based on Anaconda from Fedora Core 2, and contains many updates to components from Debian’s current testing distribution (“sarge”).” This is the second snapshot of Progeny Debian 2.0 Developer Edition and it contains three ISO images.
Development Release: Progeny Debian 2.0 Beta 1
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I have no clue what this mean even after reading a few of their pages. Thye offer up kernel modules and a packaging system as examples. Supposedly the ability to choose what you install from a list of packages catagorised by their features is “Componentized Linux”. Well whatever, but as you can see, it’s not sinking in.
When will a user edition be finalised? I am kind of sick of Fedora and it’s lack of quality. I am not trolling, Fedora just doesn’t do it for me. There Core is too big.
I want to use Debian, so for now I am putting some hope in this project.
It basicially defines set’s of packages, in as far as being able to select wether to use Gnome 2.4 or 2.6, but still being able to use other apps with the base componants selected.
This has the great advantage of being able to update parts of the production os while still giving users the options of wether to use the updates or not.
Eg. It fixes problems where like Debian Potato still only contains Gnome 1.4.1. With Progeny’s idea, you can mix and match the componants you like.
Frankly, I’m not sure what all this componitized linux is, but it really doesn’t matter. First, it’s an easy to install Debian distro with anaconda and kudzu. While the new debian-installer has made huge strides, it just isn’t quite up for me yet. Second, I trust that what Ian Murdock is doing is worthwhile/smart. He founded Debian and doesn’t seem to have any weird agenda or anything. The basic concept, as I understand it, is that the parts of Linux should be easily interchangable. I don’t know how he is going to do this, but it would be really cool if he could.
I have seen people putting Anaconda into Debian and Gentoo (Vidalinux made it) and I think it is a great idea ! Slackware would need this too.
I prefer to use these old and non-commercial distributions but they had not the same facilities found in commercial linux distributions like Red hat, Mandrake and others. Now, with anaconda & kudzu, they are becoming more easy for new users.
I don’t believe in Novell’s and RedHat’s (and other american companies) intentions. I think that they will become like traditional Unix vendors, making expensive linux distributions.
I have high hopes for this but it is still very early in the release cycle. By the looks it is for developers only at this time.
I tried the previous release and it barely worked. But I do think this has great potential and it’ll get better and better as time goes by. Anaconda is a great installer; it does a great job of being powerful and simple at the same time, and it would be great if it was adopted as a standard for distributions.
As Marcelo said, Slackware with Anaconda would be a killer combo.
“I am kind of sick of Fedora and it’s lack of quality. I am not trolling, Fedora just doesn’t do it for me. There Core is too big.”
Read the body of the OSnews article already. It has little to do with Fedora, only Anaconda got ported from RedHat/Fedora. The rest is based on Debian GNU/Linux Sarge. Ian is one of the people who started Debian btw, FWIW to note that.
I really don’t buy Kudzu will be better than Discover, which Debian-Installer currently uses. Read “Why Discover” for why Discover is better hardware detection tool than Kudzu:
http://www.licquia.org/archives/2004/06/07/why-discover/
Kudzu had problems dealing with 2.6 kernel. On the other hand Discover just added some data, and no change was required to support 2.6.
So far, I like what I see. I was a big fan of Profeny 1.0 when it was avialable. Let’s see how this distro turns out.
I just got the isos last night and gave it a try this morning. The installer was not as responsive as the Red Hat Anaconda, but it worked. The OO package was broken and it didn’t configure my soundcard. Overal it did make for an easy install, and I bet it will be much better after the developer version. But I did uninstall and go back to my other method of installing Knoppix and apt-getting up to unstable.
Read my intentions again, I wish to move from Fedora to Debian. I believe a user edition of this distro will make my transition very easy.
I simply don’t have time to read manuals to install debian. But if I could get debian on my system without all the junk KNOPPIX includes, then I believe I could have a maintanable system that doesn’t need to have 4 CDs downloaded each release.
Sorry if I wasn’t very clear, I didn’t want to go totally offtopic. I just want to know about the User Edition.
🙂
Why not try Mepis then? It’s basically Sarge/SID with a couple of great tools built-in. Runs like a champ and works perfectly with Debian’s apt repositories (I’ve heard of some issues with Knoppix). Anyway, the great thing about these LiveCDs is that you can easily try them before committing. As for the “all the junk KNOPPIX includes” comment, apt-get remove is your friend 😉
This is one of the few truely interesting Linux Distribution projects that I’ve seen. Right now it’s full of irritating little bugs and other minor annoyances (mostly dumb defaults), but it looks like it could well be a very nice system once it gets out of beta.
A single CD install, with everything that most users require to do day to day tasks, easy to update (apt-get), and easy to build upon. It’s really sad that it’s taken people this long to do something like this, but it’s really great that it’s finally being done.
I think I will try Mepis.
About your comment.
apt-get remove is your friend 😉
I wouldn’t know what packages to remove.
Why not mepis you say hmmm a toughie but the use of a customized kernel means you can FORGET about grabbing and installing a kernel .deb off an official Debian Unstable repository via APT + debconf. I know of many who defected from Mepis because of the X 4.3 and KDE 3.2 headaches a few months ago (check out the sextillion number of threads on fixing the aftermath of ‘apt-get upgrade’ in Mepis).
The ease of configuring one’s network or utilities that allow one to with a few clicks clear one’s Konq, Mozilla and Bash history via a GUI frontend is simply NOT worth the while for the serious users if every major release of X or a DE like KDE or Gnome reproduces the kind of mess X 4.3 and KDE 3.2 did. This coming from an ex-Mepis user.