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Linux Business

Progeny Debian Is No More 155

Posted by timothy from the cryin'-shame dept.
Nickus writes: "According to this announcement on the Progeny homepage, development of their Progeny Debian has stopped and will no longer be available for sale after 15th of October. They will provide a migration path to the next release of Debian though."
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Progeny Debian Is No More More

Progeny Debian Is No More

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  • Real nice. (Score:3, Flamebait)

    by sharkey ( 16670 ) on Monday October 15, 2001 @01:31PM (#2431792)
    Not only do we kill the Linux Counter when it is only 7 years old, now we violate Progeny's remains by /.'ing its obituary. What's next? Misspelling the name of a major character from a classic work of fantasy in an online poll?

  • Wow.. (Score:1)

    by dj28 ( 212815 )
    I downloaded it when slashdot first ran the story on it. They only produced one version of it. I'm surprised they went that quick. It had one of the best installation processes. If you combine that with apt, it makes linux easy to use for anyone. It's a shame they have to go when they had a quality product.

    • Re:Wow.. (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I also had an eye on it ... promising .. now we can hope Mandrake will finally shift to apt-get ... Mandrake&apt-get would be "the best" distro in game ...
      cmon lets this discuss this ;-)

      -shanti-
    • It's not going away, Progeny is being 'integrated' into Debian.
      Personally, I have installed Progeny too, but I have modified the /apt/sources later to point to woody.

  • Libranet is cutting back as well (Score:3, Informative)

    by mkelley ( 411060 ) <slashdot AT mkelley DOT net> on Monday October 15, 2001 @01:32PM (#2431804) Homepage
    http://linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=2001-10 -03-015-20-NW-DB
  • a migration path to Debian woody will be provided by the end of October

    Does this mean that woody is almost done?

  • woody's installer still can't do X properly on *any* box I've tried it on. Hopefully the Debian project will incorporate some of Progeny's ideas now that they can't leave it up to the company.

  • product, not company (Score:5, Informative)

    by SirEdward ( 145032 ) on Monday October 15, 2001 @01:34PM (#2431819) Homepage

    If you finish reading the article, you'll notice that they are simply no longer developing an alternative Debian distribution and will, instead, contribute their changes directly to the official Debian distribution. From the annoncement:

    "From a business perspective, our customers consistently ask for Debian, not Progeny Debian, and while Progeny Debian is technically just a "release" of Debian (akin to "potato" or "woody" from the Debian project), the appearance of maintaining a separate or "forked" version is a liability given our company's shift away from a mass-market product and service focus and toward consulting and other professional services.

    Progeny will continue to help further the development and adoption of Debian in commercial settings, and we will continue to contribute enhancements to Debian that help Debian become a more viable platform for commercial users. This announcement only affects Progeny Debian the product; it in no way affects Progeny's ongoing commitment to the Debian project or its Debian deployment, custom development, and support services for commercial users."

    • Re:product, not company (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Vagary ( 21383 )

      So what's their business model now? Debian-specific consulting?

      • Re:product, not company (Score:1, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward
        No, it's trying to make money of a free product.

        Remember the underpants gnomes on Southpark? Their business model was:

        1. Steal underpants
        2. ???
        3. Profit

        Seems a lot like the Linux business model.

    • Re:product, not company (Score:4, Insightful)

      by big.ears ( 136789 ) on Monday October 15, 2001 @02:06PM (#2431973) Homepage
      That's good news. I cut my teeth on Storm and Progeny, but quickly found that they were unable to provide a current distribution, and switched to vanilla debian. At least in today's software environment, using a 6-month-old distribution is painful. Just think of all the software that has gone from nearly unusable to excellent in the last 6 months: Mozilla, OpenOffice, gnumeric, dia, sodipodi, Abiword, evolution, nautilus, galeon, and gnucash on the Gnome side, and just about everything on the KDE side has made improvements as well (although they weren't as unusable as Gnome 6 months ago.)
      • As far as I know, "vanilla" debian (and I can only assume this means potato) doesn't have most of those programs and the ones it does have are probably at least one major revision behind.

        Installing potato *does* hurt in the sense that a large number of the apps are outdated (often time very severely) but in trade you get stability and security. Of course, you can always upgrade to testing (Woody) or unstable (Cid) but both are usually broken in such a way a *normal* user couldn't fix. That bums me out.

        Debian, IMO, is dying for Woody to become stable. Until that happens, all the chest beating about how far linux and programs designed for linux have come will fall on deaf ears to the no/low risk Debian user and everyone else will be installing Red Hat. =(

        Of course, the Debian community is doing the best the can, I just wanted to point out that "vanilla" Debian is a distro over 6 months old and really isn't a good choice for the programs you described unless you install them manually (which defeats the whole purpose of installing debian anyway!)
        • By Vanilla, I meant not repackaged (by storm, progeny, or ximian.) My point was that the only way to use current software with Debian is to use Debian testing/unstable, which the repackaged versions generally don't support. So I'm glad that I can hire Progeny to support my 'vanilla' Debian installations, rather than only a 'Progeny' Debian install--because I'm not willing to to do that.
        • i completely agree with you on your view of potato. some packages, like the entire gnome distro, are outdated. you could change you sources, and pull down gnome from woody or sid. not that i would recommend that, of course. undoubtedly, they would require some new version of glibc, etc. i run sid on my daily workstation (not my server or firewall) and love it. it's not as broken as one might think. there are days when some packages won't update due to a dependency not being uploaded yet, but it always seems to sort itself out in a day or two. debianplanet [debianplanet.org] does a good job of letting people know about the packages that are really broken (X was the other day). i switched to sid from redhat, and there's no turning back for me.
      • Just remove the package, download the more up-to-date source, and compile it yourself. That's what I did with Abiword, and I'd hardly call it painful.

        For 99% of everything, Debian is as up-to-date as I need it to be. I can compile everything else myself.

        • Wasn't Progeny meant to be an luser-friendly distribution? Your average luser would laugh the hell out of you at the very mention of having to compile software themselves ;) (yes, I know a couple of people who are just Linux *users* and want to keep it that way, clicking their way through Gnome or KDE, however strange it sounds).
          • Sheeesh, more arrogant Linux blather. If you want to install everything from source, or whatever, fine. No one's gonna stop you. But just because someone else is more interested in what the computer does than in how it works, don't derisively brand them as a "luser".


            Most of the time, I use Linux 'cause it is Unix. I don't care a whit about open source, Stallman, and other theologians. Most everyone else I know uses something else. They want their computers to make their lives easier, and they want to be able to get work done without. As they'd say, that's what computers are for.

            • Praise the freakin' (insert your deity here)!!
              I finally found someone who I can agree with on Slashdot!!!
              My thoughts exactly. A computer is a computer, not a damn religion. I use Linux for my workstation because I feel that it is the best match. I use OpenBSD for my firewall because it is the best OS for that role.
          • In that case, I would laugh at the luser for not going with Mandrake or RedHat. Anybody who doesn't realize that beginners need to go with what everybody else is using gets what they deserve.

        • Good for you. However, on my lowly machine (300MHz) everything takes too damn long to compile. If I just want to get a utility or something to do something quick, no way in hell am I going to wait 10 minutes for the damn thing to compile. Also, compiling KDE or GNOME on a slow machine is quite a challenge. You have to compile each component (kde-libs, kde-base) seperately, so you have to go to the trouble of writing a shell script to do it.
          • I've got a 300MHz Celery and compiles are fast. I think you're just impatient if 10 minutes is too long to wait for a compile. It's not as bad as it was in the DOS days. You can background the process and do something else.

  • Not such a bad thing really (Score:4, Insightful)

    by gmack ( 197796 ) <gmack@noSpAM.innerfire.net> on Monday October 15, 2001 @01:35PM (#2431823) Homepage Journal
    While it's sad to see another player leave the field this will make it easier for the others to make a profit. Right now there are too many distros fighting over too few users and we could stand to lose a coupple more.

    Having said that, I would still like to see someone else other than just RedHat actually make money at this. (congrats to them but we need some long term competition)

  • Dang. (Score:1, Redundant)

    by kenzoid ( 9370 )
    Well, this sucks. I was afraid it was going to happen, but it still sucks. Debian will perservere, though.

  • Read the damn anouncement. (Score:5, Informative)

    by Zapdos ( 70654 ) on Monday October 15, 2001 @01:35PM (#2431827)
    For all you id10ts out there they are not closing shop. They are merging with debian proper.

    This announcement only affects Progeny Debian the product; it in no way affects Progeny's ongoing commitment to the Debian project or its Debian deployment, custom development, and support services for commercial users.

  • It makes sence. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by the_2nd_coming ( 444906 ) on Monday October 15, 2001 @01:38PM (#2431855) Homepage
    Ian made Progeny to make Debian more simple to install, most of the stuff that sold progeny will be included in Woody so why go with progeny and why split the code. having a comercial side to the Debian project it self is more appealing to me. it will give Debian more market consiousness while not infecting the rest of the project.
  • I use Progeny Debian on my laptop and have never a *nix work so flawlessly, and able to detect *everything* on my old CTX 700E. I hope someone else keeps up the work they've been doing because, IMHO, Progeny Debian is a great distro.

  • It's inevitable (Score:1, Insightful)

    by SquierStrat ( 42516 )
    Truthfully, this is going to happen again and again in the next few years until the field is dwindled to a few or possibly just one distribution is left. I just hope Mandrake is included. With the state of all things economic there jsut isn't the room for all of these distributions in the financial sense of the word room. Sad thing, but true...just part of capitolism and how it works however.

    Derek Greene
    • I don't think so. Every time you look around, there's a new distro out.
      • Aye, but how long do they last and with what success? Look at the demographics! You've mainly RedHat, Mandrake, SuSE, Debian and a couple of RedHat derivatives (I'd no longer say Mandrake is...can't use the same packages anymore.) and then there is this tiny portion of other. Sorry, that's like saying Wal-Mart isn't the most used, most powerful, biggest retail chain in the U.S. just because there are still some K-Marts and Woolworth's out there! Perhaps I should say it's like saying that ClearChannel and Cox do not control the radio just because there are still some independants.

        Derek Greene
        • That doesn't mean some bunch of smart upstarts aren't going to come up with something that might make their distro as mighty as RedHat. Mandrake wasn't paid much attention until the past couple of years.
  • It's an email so it's legal to mirror it.

    Their site is slashdotted to all heck and back.

  • Project NOW (Score:5, Interesting)

    by DeadPrez ( 129998 ) on Monday October 15, 2001 @02:07PM (#2431980) Homepage
    The most intresting thing coming out of Progeny was Project NOW [progeny.com] which earlier this year was cancelled [slashdot.org]. IMO, this was the killer app linux definately needed to stand head and shoulders above competitors, rather than continuing to compete based on (IMHO rather) trivial benchmark tests. I hope this some how allows Progeny to get back to working on NOW, which is the future for any corporate network OS, Linux, MS or otherwise.

    The Progeny distribution, while having a nicer install for Debian wasn't really impressive enough to ever catch on. I suppose some people will miss it but I am pretty sure all involved (Debian Project, Progeny, and end users) will all benefit from decision to end the Progeny distro and have all efforts be put directly into Debian.
    • Page unavailable.
      What was NOW supposed to be, I forget.

      Some kind of installation for an enterprise? Proper management of all stations, remote apps, mosix, etc?
  • When they had their inital showing on /., the press release mentioned how great they were because they were not Unix.

    Given they did not understand WHAT they were, I doubted how long they would stay in the marketplace.

    Looks like the answer is 'not long'. If they had something worth having WRS will buy it.

  • Diversity is good! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by ChaoticCoyote ( 195677 ) on Monday October 15, 2001 @02:17PM (#2432026) Homepage

    Diversity is the engine of evolution; ergo, a sign of a healthy Linux is multiple distributions meeting different needs. Natural selection will weed out the weak, while the survivors will settle into niches both great and small.

    Right now, everybody and their dog seems to have a Linux distro... just check out DistroWatch [distrowatch.com] for the states of 36 different distros around the planet.

    If Progeny's niche had merit, another distro will come along and fill the void. If it had no merit (and I don't know, not having used it), then its passing allows energy to flow to stronger distros.

    Boy, that sounds New-Agey! ;)

    • Progeny strengths are Debians strengths, namely the ease of upgrading and installing new software and a very cleanly laid out system. The other huge benefit of using Progeny was the fact that it had the Debian heritage behind it all the way, which is what convinced me to try it in the first place. The installer was (is) nice also, maybe the best I have seen. For what it is worth, Progeny is my favorite distro, but I am going out and *buying* the latest from SuSE today. Everyone out there who loves their favorite distro and wants to see them around for a while should do the same.

  • Read their Press Release! (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    They put it in pretty plain terms:

    * their work has been integrated back into
    mainstream Debian

    * their customers wanted Debian

    * their business focus is shifting towards
    consulting and professional services

    ... this isn't the "death of Progeny." It's the
    fruition of their work in a branch of development.

    (Branching is different from "forking" in that
    the intent is usually to merge/re-integrate
    at some later point).

  • Debian (Score:3, Funny)

    by BlowCat ( 216402 ) on Monday October 15, 2001 @02:54PM (#2432242)
    Debian haber utilizado un nombre mejor para la distribucion.
    • For those that cant read Spanish, "BlowCat" is saying that Debian has to have a better name.

      - Sam

  • It seems very unlucky for the "Commercial Debian based distros" going belly up....Is it a curse or something????...Or maybe some serious gypsy curse or something....(your VC) is getting thinner, thinner, thinner...

    My apoligies to all non Stephen King fans that did not get that one..
  • I predicted this.
    At the time it came out, progeny was great. Not worlds apart from debian.. but it was my preferred install.. (it was the best pick of the latest stuff, basically). I didn't think they would keep it up, or turn a profit though.



  • ... from the article they say they are "merging" with debian proper - of course that's what a company would say. it's all about the wording..

    i've tried using progeny for about a little bit, but when i try shifting and symlinking my /home -> /var/home it doesnt seem to like that. it's got great hardware support, but unfortunately that was only good for the period it was released. it was good for fresh installs, but the inability to do that /var/home -> /home is just pretty bad...

    it's also got a whole bunch of wrappers used everywhere - in places where it sneaks in a few progeny logos here and there. well you cant blame them - they're were a company afterall.

    release 1 was quite a while ago. on the other side of the spectrum, redhat's constantly releasing beta software... what's a company to do? *sigh*

    in the first place, people use progeny because they have all heard that the distro's based on debian with great hardware detection. people are attracted to the robustness and ... well things actually work in debian unlike certain distros that are entirely based on rpms....

    hmmm...corel, storm, and progeny are all gone.. all based on debian
    • I tried both corel and storm. There's a big difference between "based on debian" and "debian".

      Corel tried to take the UNIX out of linux. When I couldn't find a package for the 'mail' command, I knew it wasn't the linux for me.

      I can't remember what I didn't like about storm though - seems like I only had it for a couple weeks before I gave up in frustration.

      Debian, though, is great - it's got a bit for everyone - want a server? Use stable. Want a stable workstation? Use testing. Want a bleeding edge install? Use sid (or unstable as it's called). And apt-get can't be beat. It wasn't as effective on corel and storm because there wasn't much to get - while debian has more packages than you can dream of (I think perhaps only SuSE has more, not sure).

      I know few people who were already experienced with linux that used the corel distro. For a slackware/debian freak like me, it couldn't cut it.

  • Merging with Debian Good! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Dacmot ( 266348 ) on Monday October 15, 2001 @03:34PM (#2432623)
    I've never used Progeny, but I've tried to get Debian on machines of many people who wanted to try Linux for the first time. Installing Potato requires quite of bit of knowledge about the hardware of a particular computer before *starting* to install. It's nice to hear that debian will be getting an easier installation program. Definetly a good thing to show that linux isn't *that* scary :o)
  • I wasn't able to read the information as it was slashdotted, but I have read a couple people state that they are just killing off Progney Debian so they can focus all their work on the main debian instead of having a seperate branch.

    So I was wondering, when will we see this happen, is it already happening? What I really want to know is when woody gets released as ISOs will there be the progeny graphical installation? I love their installation.

    I also love Progeny Debian as it was a very very solid clean fealing distro. Only problem is after about 3 days I realized they weren't updating packages whatsoever and if I stuck with Progeny I'd be stuck with old software, so I upgraded it to sid.

    What would be great, and debian developers will probably hate this idea, is if they would release ISOs (or a nice way to do a net install) of the current state of unstable with Progeny Debian's install. I would suggest that to anyone who wanted to try out linux because debian unstable is very up to date, and from my usage I've found it to be much more solid feeling than something like Mandrake, which is the distro I've been suggesting to people since it's kept so up to date, but damn it's falky, the package managing program didn't even work correctly for me so it was pretty useless.

    Well, think I've wrote enough. Better just remind people what my main question was here since I sorta trailed off. Will we see Debian Woody come out with a nice graphical installation (the one from Progeny)?

  • Progeny announcement (Score:1, Redundant)

    by benmhall ( 9092 )
    Karma... Here's the announcememnt:

    Progeny Debian

    As of October 1,2001 Progeny has ceased development on its Progeny Debian product; there will be no further releases of the product, and all direct sales of the product will end October 15, 2001. (For a limited time, Progeny Debian will continue to be available for purchase from select distributors. Visit http://www.progeny.com/archive/debian/sales/ for more information.) For recent purchasers of the Progeny Debian boxed product, the 30-day free telephone and 90-day free email support included with the product will remain available until December 31, 2001; for all users of Progeny Debian, a migration path to Debian woody will be provided by the end of October, and support for Progeny Debian will continue to be available from Progeny on a per-incident and contract basis, just as it is today for Debian and other variants (e.g., Corel Linux).

    The primary motivation for this decision is our desire for convergence with Debian proper. From a technical perspective, nearly all of the features we introduced in Progeny Debian have found or are finding their way into Debian, and it is thus becoming increasingly unnecessary for us to continue investing the resources required to maintain a separate "Progeny enhanced" version.

    From a business perspective, our customers consistently ask for Debian, not Progeny Debian, and while Progeny Debian is technically just a "release" of Debian (akin to "potato" or "woody" from the Debian project), the appearance of maintaining a separate or "forked" version is a liability given our company's shift away from a mass-market product and service focus and toward consulting and other professional services.

    Progeny will continue to help further the development and adoption of Debian in commercial settings, and we will continue to contribute enhancements to Debian that help Debian become a more viable platform for commercial users. This announcement only affects Progeny Debian the product; it in no way affects Progeny's ongoing commitment to the Debian project or its Debian deployment, custom development, and support services for commercial users.

    For more information about migrating from Progeny Debian to Debian woody, or about support for Debian or Progeny Debian after December 31, 2001, please visit our technical support Web page. For more general questions, please contact Steve Schafer.

    Ian Murdock
    Chairman
    Progeny Linux Systems

    Steve Schafer
    President and CEO
    Progeny Linux Systems
  • It really is. I used Debian for years, then Storm came out with what essentially was Debian with a nice pretty and easy installer. Which took the work out of the pain in the a*s of picking packages with dselect with vanilla debian. Besides for that, it still had all the power of Debian. It was a great install, and they died. Then Progeny came along, which was even better then Storm. I haved used progeny on many machines, and have recommended it to many friends. The installation process is just plain smooth, and I think is much easier then Windows to install. The only problem I had with Progeny, is that with my board (Asus A7V266 or A7A266, whatever its called) it takes around 1.5 hours to install, because it sits after the first reboot at "Preconfiguring packages" or something like that for an hour, before it moves on). My friend has the same config as me as far as processor and board, and it does the same thing for him. Besides for that, I loved Progeny. Its a shame to see it go. I hope Debian incorporates the Progeny installer. Thanks for a great product Mr Murdoch.

  • Having used Progeny, and straight Debian, I'd have to say both have features that I liked. Although I had more problems with Progeny though.

    Progeny has hardware auto-detect code, which doesn't use the standard modconf/mod-utils/etc for setting up kernel modules. A good idea, but on my laptop I found it would not detect the neomagic soundcard correctly. To me, the design problem was that autodetect would run at boot time rather than install time, where I could correct errors in its autodetection. There were configuration files, but they didn't feel complete enough to correct the errors with.

    But to have Progeny's work included into vanilla Debian is A Good Thing(tm). It seems more and more companies are moving towards a service model, away from a product model. Which, although easier means they will be limited by person power instead of product distribution power.

    I wish them luck.

  • Debian is the most open, standard Linux distribution, and by many standards, it is the best Linux distribution. Debian is not owned by a company, but instead it is developed by a wide variety of coders from all over the world.

    When the dot-com market croaked, many Linux distributions had to let coders go, and some Linux distributions flat out died. This will never happen to Debian Linux because Debian is a different beast. Debian will always be here. Here to satisfy the practical computer user, and here to satisfy the open source puritan.

    Progeny Linux isn't dying. In fact, it is going to a better place: pure Debian Linux... maybe even Woody. I like to think of it that Progeny Linux is going to the "heaven" of open source.
    • Sorry, I just had to say that.

      Oddly enough, while being the most "free" version of Linux, Debian is also closest to the BSD projects in term of development model. Since the Anonymous Coward crowd immediately cast "WRS lays off FreeBSD developers" as "FreeBSD is dying," this obviously means Debian is dying, too.

      Or maybe neither really needs an advertising budget anymore? Nah, that couldn't be it.

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