Progeny Debian 2.0 DE RC1 has been released. Progeny Debian 2.0 DE aims to provide an unmatched ‘out of the box’ environment for software developers building applications for the Java, Mono/.NET and LAMP platforms.
Progeny Debian 2.0 RC1
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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I expect good things from these people. I am downloading it now.
What are the advantages of Progeny over say Ubuntu? Any reason for somebody who likes Ubuntu to try Progeny 2?
Probably better Debian compatibility? I haven’t tried it yet.
But I did try Ubuntu and making it properly Debian compatible was a lot of work. Completely replace your sources.list with standard Debian repositories and perform a dist-upgrade (hoping that nothing goes wrong)
But if you couldn’t care less about Debian compatibility (I do) then just stay with Ubuntu.
Besides, operating systems are not a religion for me. I like to try as many as possible.
The only thing that would make Progeny Debian better is if it was on one CD instead of two. Otherwise, it is fantastic!
I thought Progency stopped making a distro
Hmm, that sounds really interesting. I will be checking that out asap.
Also, I’ve loved Ubuntu from the beginning, but i find it to be a terrible development platform. Maybe i messed it up, but i didn’t even have GCC. And the Russian Roulette of using debian packages is a bit troubling.
I can’t wait to check this out.
I quess the creator can’t quit. Are they charging for the final? How long will it be before Debian can assume the xorg server? I’m running vector 5 and now Fedora 3 to try it out. Otherwise i’d stay 100% Debian.
Can the new ATI drivers build on xorg 6.8.1
You must have. I’ve had nothing but success with using Ubuntu for development. I’ve done a lot of swapping in and out of libraries in the last few months for evaluation purposes, and Ubuntu performs like a champ. Where I have needed to install .debs or compile from source — no problems there either.
I guess the most significant differences compared to Ubuntu is that is uses Anaconda and that it is “Componentized” ( http://componentizedlinux.org ). Basically, they’ve devided the distro into smaller, more manageable, chunks. The idea is that the packages in each component only depend on other packages in the same component (plus the dependencies of the component itself).
Among other things, this makes it possible to release updated versions of components independently.
It’s called “apt-get install GCC”
apt-get install build-essential
That will install most of the things you need to compile programs in Ubuntu.
> Completely replace your sources.list with standard Debian repositories and perform
> a dist-upgrade (hoping that nothing goes wrong)
May I ask why you didn’t go for Debian in the first Place?
Well, I don’t know why A.P. didn’t go for straight Debian, but I’ll tell you why I didn’t.
I’m running the last Progeny RC release. It was a one CD download that had, at the time, up to date packages I wanted (Gnome 2.4, OOo, Firefox, Evolution, etc.) It basically gave me an up to date Debian deskyop with a nice installer.
I’m on dialup, so I don’t usually upgrade anything major until I get a new CD release. (I download the ISO at work and bring it home).
Debian stable is too old and needs too much upgrading. I guess I could have found unstable ISO images, but the Progeny package was just easier.
That said, I am downloading Ubuntu now. It looks like what I want – Debian based, one CD, latest and greatest packages set up for a desktop user.
-JD
I already have Debian in my PC as one of my 2 OSes (the other one being SuSE)
As I said I like trying as many operating systems as possible.
I just wanted to know how much I liked Ubuntu, how Debian compatible it was and if it made for a better Debian installer than Debian Proper.
It is easy to install, but in order to make it properly Debian compatible one must do what I said (something I would not recommend to a newbie)
1: anaconda installer+ some nice ported redhat tools
2: all that a newbie needs (pakages)
3: plugins out of the box
= a nice newbie/admin install
That is more or less the difference between debian/umbuthu( or somthing, what a choice for a name by the way) and Progeny.
If Stormix makes a comeback, we can party like its 1999. Oh, wait…
It has tomcat 4.x which is way old. what are they thinking? XFree4.3 and gcc 3.3 not 3.4.2? As a developer I would want the most up to date *STABLE* package, which is not tomcat 4.x
I’m not totally clear on the content of ‘componentized linux’, except that I think it is a terrible name
Could somebody running Progeny tell me what does that mean in practice, and how compatible is their system with Debian? Does Progeny use Debian repositories? Do they achieve this ‘componentization’ with some sort of meta overlay/pinning trickery, or do they have their own repositories, like Ubuntu?
“Componentized Linux” is the idea of creating a distribution out of large, individually maintained components. For example, you’d have an LSB component (eg: an LSB 2.0 compatible base system), a KDE component, a GNOME component, etc. The components each live in their own repositories, so you don’t have to deal with the administrative challenges of dealing with a single repository that has 10,000 packages, each with arbitrary dependencies.
> The components each live in their own repositories
…so from what you’re saying it seems that to achieve this, Progeny would have to use their own repositories completely independent from Debian’s. And adding Debian to sources.lst on Progeny system would be a Bad Idea leading to chaos and breakage – is that right?
If I remember correctly, when I installed the last Progeny candidate (which I think was the first “componetized” version), the sources list was just set to the install CD’s.
I manually added debian unstable sources. I haven’t added a lot of packages, but the ones I have haven’t caused any problems. But most of the packages have been small without a lot of dependencies.
YMMV
-JD
I wish the Progeny folks would take some time-out to answer some of these questions. A better FAQ on their website would be helpful. The only thing I could find was:
Q: How is CL different from Debian?
A: CL follows the same basic principles that guided Debian in its early days, but provides greater granularity. The package system worked when there were only a few hundred packages, but with 10,000+, it’s too unwieldy to be practical for most businesses.
Components sound like a great idea, but you end up sacrificing the straight-forward approach of a monolithic system, and find yourself battling the matrix of interdependencies between each component. It’s definitely not easier to manage – you have to worry about all sorts of new problems, instead of “all of this software is designed and tested to work together”… Which you get every six months with Ubuntu. 🙂 [ Of course, I’m biased. ]
Ubuntu pretty much plans on getting all the debian stuff over in their universe repository. Already they have over 13,000 packages, I’m amazed you can’t find all the stuff you’re looking for.
Here are the main differences between Progeny Debian and Ubuntu from Progeny’s point of view:
1. Progeny Debian is a demonstration of Componentized Linux, Progeny’s toolkit for customized Linux distribution development, that provides an out of the box development environment for the Componentized Linux platform. Ubuntu is a single customized Linux distribution targeted at the open-source community, and at the desktop in particular.
2. Componentized Linux (and, hence, Progeny Debian) are based on Debian sarge (the upcoming Debian stable), whereas Ubuntu is based on Debian sid (unstable).
3. Progeny uses the Anaconda graphical installer, whereas Ubuntu uses the text mode Debian installer. More generally, Progeny is investing in technologies that will blur the line between the Red Hat and Debian worlds to create a truly unified distribution layer–Anaconda is just the first step.
4. Progeny has gone to great lengths to avoid introducing “forked” packages in Componentized Linux –instead, we’ve made our changes wherever possible in separate packages that modify Debian packages as appropriate while still keeping with Debian policy, and we will work with other groups building custom Debian distributions to help merge the necessary infrastructure for customizing Debian into Debian proper. Ubuntu has taken the approach of modifying the Debian packages directly, providing Ubuntu-specific versions of many (most?) packages. This was essentially the approach we took with Progeny Debian 1.0, and our experience is this approach is simply not sustainable.
6. Componentized Linux allows subsystems to evolve at their own pace. So, the core components can have a much longer release cycle (18-24 months) to make it easier for software developers and ISVs to target the platform, whereas the edge components can evolve more rapidly to satisfy user demand for the latest and greatest from the open source world. In addition, multiple versions of a component may coexist side by side. For example, while Progeny Debian ships with Gnome 2.8, Gnome 2.6 is also available in Componentized Linux for developers that want the version that ships in Debian sarge.
Which is “better”? As with everything, it depends on what’s important to you. Both are good choices for desktop use and are comparable in terms of polish and out of the box desktop experience. Progeny may have a bit of an edge here because of the Anaconda installer. Ubuntu may have a bit of an edge here simply because they have more people working on it and have been more willing to introduce Ubuntu-specific changes to the upstream Debian packages.
As a development platform, though, I give the edge to Componentized Linux. The main reason is the stable vs. unstable issue: If you develop software targeted at CL, that software will be able to run on Debian or any distribution derived from Debian without so much as a package rebuild (so long as that distribution hasn’t deviated too far from Debian). If you develop software for Ubuntu, that software will only run on Ubuntu’s version of Debian unstable. Theoretically, you could just rebuild your packages against Debian, but you have to be careful not to utilize the Ubuntu-specific changes or features that are in Debian unstable but not stable, and those kinds of things are not always easy to isolate, particularly in the Debian world of 10,000+ packages.
Tomcat 4.x is the current version available in Debian sid. When Tomcat 5.x has been packaged (or we find the time to package it ourselves), it will be a simple matter of installing the new component to get Tomcat 5.x. In other words, there will be no need to wait for the next release of the distro, as in a non-componentized distro.
A component is an abstract entity represented in XML. Think of a component as a template above an existing repository that specifies a subset of that repository with some additional metadata (dependencies, etc.), and you’re not far wrong. We do have physical repositories, but they are created automatically from the XML.
Progeny Debian 2.0 ships with a default sources.list that allows you to install packages from sarge using “apt-get install -t testing <packages>”. Everything should work as expected.
> I wish the Progeny folks would take some time-out to answer some of these questions.
Well, I’m here now. 🙂 Feel free to direct your questions to the cl-workers mailing list (see http://lists.progeny.com/listinfo/cl-workers), and we’d be happy to answer them. We’re also very close to launching a commmunity site at http://componentizedlinux.org/ that provides documentation, how-tos, and all the expected things. Stay tuned.
Hi Jeff,
I seem to remember 11 years ago people saying the very same thing about packages. 🙂
-ian
Wll joke aside, this seems very good, and I have given it a try, problem as I se it is to few are working on it.. like exim package one time had local Progeny mail settings, don`t remember his name ( tho beta, but should never have gotten in there :-))
It looks really nice for a linux distribution but if it want to market itself as an “unmatched” development environment for java it really needs a reality check.
I know that Java 5 is quite new – but still – I’d expect the latest version. It is much older than gnome 2.8 e.g. ant being a binary install it should be really simple to package.
Even worse as a java developer Eclipse 2.1 !!
Eclipse 3.0 came out ages ago and is head and shouldes above 2.1 which is old even by debian standards.
Tomcat 4 .. same story.
Then again.
Java development tools is so easy to install that if you are serious you will want to install them your self on any platform.
It is no good to have your jdk, ide og app. server upgraded automatically while being halfway though a project that is targeted for deployment on another platform than the latest and greatest. In fact I usually keep multiple versions around.
Having the runtime updated automatically is nice though.
I looks nice – but it can hardly be marketed as a java development environment.
We’re working on it. Eclipse suffers from the same problem as Tomcat (outdated version in Debian), and it’s been orphaned now too. J2SE 5 components are in the works.
As I said earlier, the good news is you’ll be able to easily update when the new components are ready–you won’t have to wait for the next version of the distro to get them.
-ian
Congratulations Mr Murdoch.
I have tried it and I found it fast, reponsive, good looking.
We couldn’t expect any less from the founder of Debian!
Sorry for spelling your name wrong