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Debian

Steven Schafer On The Future of Progeny 126

Posted by timothy from the where-we-go-from-here dept.
Eugenia writes: "Last month Progeny Linux Systems ceased development on their own distribution in order to focus on selling professional services. In their announcement, the company cited the prohibitive cost of developing and publishing a distro. This move marked another firm in the wave of tech companies, Linux and otherwise, making significant changes to adjust to the market slump. Progeny's distribution was based on Debian GNU/Linux, and many in the Linux community were closely watching the company because it was founded by Debian creator Ian Murdock. OSNews spoke to the President of Progeny Linux Systems, Michael Schafer, once the dust had settled on his company's announcement."
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Steven Schafer On The Future of Progeny More

Steven Schafer On The Future of Progeny

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  • Re: (Score:1, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Huh? (Score:1)

      by Otter ( 3800 )
      Maybe I'm missing something but -- doesn't it seem that what happened was that she submitted the same blurb to a number of sites, without bothering to create a DebianPlanet login? I'd think that was the likeliest answer even besides the fact that both texts are very similar to the article intro.

      OSNews is a very fresh, original, informative site (no, I have no connection with it besides reading it) and I think Eugenia has better things to do than plagiarize for 3 Slashdot karma points.

      • >both texts are very similar to the article intro

        Similar? More like identical except that OSNews has fixed their misstatement of Schaefer's first name being Michael instead of Steve...

        http://www.osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=317
      • Actually if you check out the homepage her link points to, you'll see she is an editor are OSNews.

    • Re:I'm impressed (Score:2, Informative)

      by benjj ( 302095 )
      Assuming its this eugena [osnews.com] then I don't think it counts as plagarism.
    • Uh, go to OSNews's front page and see that Eugenia Loli-Queru appears as the author for many of the stories. Seems he submitted a story currently running on his site to both slashdot and debianplanet. The summary is straight from the article intro (including the incorrect first name of Michael Shafer).
    • The only reason I'm posting here is to get a +2 comment (in case you, like me, read with a +2 filter set) pointing out the fact that it isn't plagarism if you wrote the original article.

      Eugenia is an OSNews editor, but it is very unlikely (as others have speculated) that she is the "Nicholas Heron" that did the interview (unless it's a male pen name).

      Besides - if you really want to participate as a "Slashdot conspiracy addict", you could say that one of the Slashdot editors is defecting and sliding submissions to Debian Planet in preparation to get a job there after VA WhateverThisWeek folds Slashdot. And add that the editor defecting is JonKatz, who is really a Grey working for the Bavarian SubGenius with a link to Majestic 12.

      --
      Evan

  • We have too many distros as it is. I'm sure there are a few that offer unique things, but many are just there.

    Imagine if everyone made their own Windows!

    Now, when Slackware decides to close up shop, let us know!
    • Get out of here with your Slackware FUD.

      Slack isn't going anywhere. The recent story posted on here titled "Is Slackware Dying?" - was completely overestimating the severity of the situation.

      Just becaus *one* developer decides to drop his work on a part (a small part at that) of the OS - does not mean it is dying.

      Patrick and the gang are still banging away at Slack 9. If you don't believe me, then go to ftp.slackware.com and checkout the changelog for the *current* version - it shows several updates.

      This OS will never die because other people will continue to maintain it even if the main people fall out. I would personally become a project lead on Slackware if it needed it - and I know several other people who would also.

      So go crawl back under your Redhat rock and install an RPM (or don't because of the damn dependencies) or something.

      Derek
      • OK, now that you trash talk Redhat, I will say to you:
        "Get out of here with your..." Redhat "...FUD"

      • Have you seen the Slackware forums lately? Until this weekend I would have agreed that Slack wasn't dying, but now I'm not so sure. :(
        • Where the *$&@ are they???????????

          Holy shit dude - that really is bad news. That was one of the best forums on the entire net - I go there almost daily to answer questions (but have been moving across the country since last friday so I haven't had a chance).

          Wow - let's hope they just took them down for maintenance or something.

          Damn

          Derek
  • I think that the Linux distros are going to become more and more alike, and the Linux companies are going to turn into service based companies providing consulting services only. It will be a sad day when nobody can afford to pay to make major improvements on a distro that was custom developed in house. Looks like that sad day is here.

    Newt-dog

    • > I think that the Linux distros are going to
      > become more and more alike...

      Boy do I hope so! I, for one, am looking forward to the day when one can say that I'm using Linux... without having to qualify that statement with "Linux, Distribution X...".
      • Yeah, kinda' like now you can say you're using "Windows". I thought the whole point of Linux was choice...?
        • Yeah, kinda' like now you can say you're using "Windows". I thought the whole point of Linux was choice...?


          I'm all for choice, but it's obviously both a curse and a blessing. You can have any flavour you like, but that means that the mindshare about what flavour is worth using gets diluted.


          Maybe people wouldn't be so confused/worried about switching to Linux if they didn't have to consider the distro wars.

          • What do you mean "worth getting used"? Linux is Linux. The whole point is that that you can get it configured any way you want. If you can only get one or two flavors, then all you've got really is a free version of Unix. Linux should offer as many choices as possible, in CONTRAST to Windows, which, now that they'fe finally done away with DOS, will only offer 3-5 versions (home, workstation, server, terminal server, and CE). Shouldn't Linux offer more?
    • That's not fair, the linux community, and many open source projects have flourished without companies paying for all the development. The code is open sourced and should live long and prosper. Don't be so negative, these are the glory days of Linux. I know that Slashdot likes to put negative spins on everything (esp. Michael), but the community is alive and well. A few years ago companies would have never thought of deploying linux, much less maintaining their own distro, but now Linux is widely deployed, its only a matter of time until they must develop linux as part of their core business solutions.

    • There's still Debian, which has an open-source-only policy (it does package up some proprietary software, like Netscape, for convenience, but that's kept in a different section of the ftp archive and never gets put on the official CDs).

      In the excessively unlikely event that Debian (or its owning organisation Software in the Public Interest) dies, there's always Linux From Scratch... (install some other Linux distro to get a platform capable of running gcc, compile a basic compiling environment on it from source, reboot into that, recompile everything from source... no, I haven't tried it, but I'm wondering whether to do so for my old slow computer)

  • 1980's all over again (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    early - mid 1980's was massive growth with all sorts of companies trying to dominate the OS and apps. Ultimatly only a few companies won that. Now we are on the next round and watching (or participating) the next replacement OS and apps.
    History will always repeat itself.

  • That's "Steve Schafer", not "Michael Schafer" (Score:4, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 20, 2001 @05:30PM (#2592310)
    Just in case no one caught the discrepancy in the article.

    Jeff Licquia, Progeny Employee

  • Despite the duck hunters above, this really is a shame for the GNU/Linux community. Progeny was one of the better Debian distro 'packagers' and will be sorely missed by many I'm sure.

    Unfortunately, very few can 'buck the market' especially when dealing in a marketplace where the buyers really do want 'something for nothing' (and I'm not excluding myself).

    Hopefully this isn't just yet another nail in the coffin for Debian...


    • Hopefully this isn't just yet another nail in the coffin for Debian...


      Coffin? I hope no-one has been arranging a funeral, because they didn't invite us, and everyone knows, failing to invite someone to their own funeral is terribly impolite..

      (but, well, is it a nice coffin? :) )

      Daniel
    • Hopefully this isn't just yet another nail in the coffin for Debian...
      Huh? Where did that come from? Progeny has nothing to do with Debian proper. The distribution is alive and well, with enthusiastic developers and a growing userbase.

      I find it telling that a volunteer-run organization is competing with and winning "customers" from the likes of Red Hat, Mandrake and SuSE.

    • Re:A shame (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Eugene O'Neil ( 140081 )

      Hopefully this isn't just yet another nail in the coffin for Debian...

      Progeny is basically admitting that the free version of Debian is getting to be just as good as their proprietary distribution ever was. That might or might not be a bad thing for Progeny, but how could it possibly be a bad thing for Debian?
    • Only a couple of months ago I bought a CD set of Progeny as my first distro, as it suggested that it was perfect for beginners. Rot. After flapping around like a drunk duck, re-installing and trying to figure out how to get the damn thing to do something as simple as send mail, I wiped my hard-drive, bought myself a collection of Debian/GNU CDs and haven't looked back since. Sure, the installer isn't as pretty and I had to mess about getting it to work with my hardware, but the beautiful simplicity of apt-get and the lack of bloated X interfaces has led to a happy relationship. I still have problems, but they are generally, with a little research and a little help, easy to fix.

      Perhaps this is due to the fact that Debian/GNU is my second distro? I don't think so. As a total beginner I have to say I have found 'straight' Debian/GNU more user-friendly than the Progeny version.

      I am probably wrong, please don't beat me, its just my opinion ;)

  • Have no fear, progeny. You will have a great future! Microsoft is going to settle for you. $1.1 billion! Quite a future indeed!

  • Why do you even bother? (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The retreat into "enterprise services" or "contract services" is the first step to insolvency. Whats interesting or insightful about profiling a company that is going out of business????
  • All we don't need is more distributions of the same thing. On the otherhand, expertise in making an already good distribution do exactly what a client wants should be a valuable commodity.

    For that matter, having proprietary tools (NOT part of any distribution) to help you manage a customers system could be quite useful - the tools don't have to be applicable to any possible configuration the way most distribution supplied tools do.

    Nowhere should open source insist that companies be non-profit.
    • "Nowhere should open source insist that companies be non-profit."

      Unfortunately it in most cases do, and thats what really stopping linux from wide adoption.

      The internet has the same problem, the lack of making money has made the current situation where the net is filled with almost 100% garbage.

      The people developing ipv6 has seriously misunderstood whats needed. It's not more technology, it's easy and well-working ways of beeing able to charge. First when it's possible to charge we will see real good content, not any time sooner.

  • The reasoning behind the decision. (Score:5, Informative)

    by Goronguer ( 223202 ) on Tuesday November 20, 2001 @05:47PM (#2592416)
    This from the Progeny website (http://www.progeny.com/archive/debian/):

    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.

    I read this to mean that the "standard" Debian distro is sufficiently good that a separate product is not necessary. Rather than being a sign of impending doom for Debian, I see this as a sign of its strength.

  • They just figured this out?

    When you add in Debian's slower development and release schedule, things get really tricky. The only way to release more quickly is to release a separate product, in essence forking from the main Debian distribution. We've seen this with every "derivative" distribution -Mandrake, Stormix, Corel. Looking down the road we saw Progeny Debian varying further and further from the Debian core, a path that didn't benefit customers, Debian, or Progeny.

    This really irritates me. He's now saying that their original value proposition was faulty.Guess what? That's what people were *paying* for - Debian with a bit more ease and less idiosyncracies.

    The real reason why Progeny never happened is because their distro was (IMO) unfinished crap. It couldn't compete with what others were charging for, and the support that they gave, IMO, wasn't worth spit. In fact, if you bought the "download" distro, they refused to give you an electronic version of their beloved manual.

    Progeny, IMO, was criminal in its behavior towards its customers - first releasing a substandard distro, then orphaning it because no one wanted it.

  • "significant changes to adjust to the market slump. "

    This is no temporary market slump. Most tech-companies aren't worth anything since they don't make enough money to make their businesses work.

    The value in tech related companies will not raise until most of them handle their business in a professional manner with good (and working) business-models.

    If there will ever be a positive trend has little to do with the market situation in general, it has everything to do about how those companies are managed and their businessmodels.

    What this mean is if you want to be able to have a long lasting business you must: 1) Charge for your work, this is ofcause mutual exclusive with giving your work away. May sound simple but the number of people not understanding such a simple reality is just amazing. 2) Make things that people want and beeing there for the cunsumer. Again, the number of people thinking that job is the same thing as playing around is just amazing in this industry.

    If you don't charge for your products you will not be able to continue business in the long run, simple as that.
  • ... people don't mind crap, if its the same crap everybody else has.

  • Porting the Progeny Installer to Woody (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Jagasian ( 129329 ) on Tuesday November 20, 2001 @06:25PM (#2592707)
    Will the Progeny OS installer be ported to Woody? One of the most important things to improve in Debian is its installer. User-friendly installers mean more Debian users.

    Until then, people will have to get an old Progeny CD, install Progeny 1.0, and change their apt lines, then apt-get update and apt-get dist-upgrade.

    Sure its not difficult to change a text file full of URLs and then type "apt-get update" and "apt-get dist-upgrade" (which would automatically upgrade your entire OS from Progeny to Woody), but then again, I have seen people claim that its difficult to install applications on Linux, which is as easy as typing "apt-get install whateveryouwant".

    • Re:Porting the Progeny Installer to Woody (Score:4, Informative)

      by CentrX ( 50629 ) on Tuesday November 20, 2001 @06:42PM (#2592861)
      The Debian installer is easy, as long as you know your hardware. Now, the two things that people most frequently site that supposedly would make it easier to use are hardware autodetection and the usage of an X installer.

      Hardware autodetection is great, if you don't mind having it simply not work and freezing a user's system every once in a while. It's not hard to just have a person enter in their hardware.

      An X installer is just silly, as if a higher resolution increases ease of use at all. Including an X installer poses many problems, mainly that it would diverge development on the installer. It would be far better to just have an excellent console installer. Furthermore, including an X installer would dramatically increase the size of the Debian installation system (which currently fits on a few floppy disks), and, again, would have the problem of unsupported hardware. A system administrator shouldn't need to waste time downloading, loading, and then later uninstalling X because it was never needed it to run his web server in the first place.

      • Re:Porting the Progeny Installer to Woody (Score:4, Insightful)

        by starseeker ( 141897 ) on Tuesday November 20, 2001 @07:14PM (#2593126) Homepage
        "The Debian installer is easy, as long as you know your hardware. Now, the two things that people most frequently site that supposedly would make it easier to use are hardware autodetection and the usage of an X installer.

        Hardware autodetection is great, if you don't mind having it simply not work and freezing a user's system every once in a while. It's not hard to just have a person enter in their hardware."

        Yes it is. There are many, many cases where there is no way to figure out the hardware, especially if you are trying to uphold the Linux reputation for bring old boxes back to life. Boards are notorious for not having all the needed information on them, and you may not have the luxury of the original documentation. Under those circumstances, hardware detection may be critical. I know, because I myself have been in this situation.

        As for X, that is indeed overkill. I would like to see some small windowing system, like pgui, be adopted for this purpose. A friendly face is worth a lot to new users, and as long as the option is provided for the text install, I don't see what the problem is.
        • I think X installers could be appropriate for some distros but not debian.
          • I guess that you were proven correct by Progeny Debian's demise. Unfortunately, many disagreed with you. Progeny Debian's X Based installer was touted as one of it's great advantages. For many systems, I'd have to agree.

            But I personally preferred the better integration with GNOME and GRUB, along with the better doumentation. Gnome-help and the centralized Gnome toolkit were nice. I feel that Progeny Debian was discontinued prematurely, but out of necessity for financial reasons.
            • Personally I feel like there are too many distros in the first place. If you want a easy to install system then you have your choice of red hat, suse, mandrake and maybe tubolinux. For the geekier crowd there is debian and slackware. For people choosing debian or slackware I don't think installers are a big deal.

              If I had developers and wanted a debian based distro I would try and find a way to speed up debian development. Or perhaps make some improvements to apt so that you can run a stable distro with the latest apache and php or something. If I was really bold and bright I would ditch apt (the best thing in linux) and build an even better binary mechanism that isolates apps even better.
              • Theoretically there is no reason why there shouldn't be infinitely many distinct distributions of Linux. My having an unrelated distro really shouldn't have any tangible effect on your distro. Most of the concievable negative effects are negated by following the LSB, if not the FHS. The only significant problem I see is that of a newbie being overwhelmed by their initial choice, if they don't have any criteria to choose their distribution by.

                This is why is would be good to have a central resource that has a taxonomy of Linux distributions, along with user rankings of different aspects of the various versions of differing distros. That way, by answering a few simple questions a newbie could be guided to the highest quality distro that fulfills their criterion. I know of at least one web site that has a compilation of the various distros available, but I am not certain of any that have a useful ranking.

                Now I don't see why you allow for the choice between Mandrake and Red Hat. Progeny is at least as different from Debian proper as Mandrake is from Redhat. The most obvious difference in Mandrake is that during the standard RedHat install, it switches over to a much nicer graphical install that had a much more robust Hardware autodetection the last time I tried it. If you can point out some more distinctions between Mandrake and RedHat, then Maybe you have a valid point. As is, your bias is most unfortunate... RedHat and Mandrake add more to the distro glut due to overlap than Turbolinux does.

                Progeny also has a nice GUI installer not available to Debian proper. I understand that Mandrake now includes Grub as standard over Lilo while RedHat doesn't... Progeny used GRUB from day one. And it was quite nice to have Progeny development seperate from standard Debian, as it allowed such packages as GnuCash with very complex dependancies to be prioritized for the commericial Progeny, while it is just about unusable in any standard Debian distro. One of the important qualities of Debian is that it does not have any kind of externally set release schedule, which is a large part of the reason the stability of the Debian distro far outshines the other distributions.

                You seem to not understand The Debian system very well, which is very unfortunate. It is not inherently more complex, it just seems evident that you have never given it a real chance. Apt does not have some magical technology that far surpasses all other forms of package management. The advantage lies in the policy, and politics, which are inherently slow moving. The red tape of policy, while annoying if you have a political agenda, is great if you want a stable system. Apt doesn't isolate the apps, Apt just applies the rules policy dictates.

                FYI, you can have the Stable distro and run the latest apache if you like. The most "stable" way would be to compile your own apache package, with proper dependencies set, and then install that. If you just want to install the premade package, you can do that as well... but it might require you to update some of your libraries to newer, less "stable" versions if the apache dependancies demande it.

                Again, Debian development should not be "sped up" in the way you seem to suggest, which would imply relaxing the Debian policies. Those policies are the reason why Debian will remain the best long term solution to an operating system. The problem is when you need something "now" that might not be available yet... The best solution IMHO was the one Progeny pursued, basing their own distro off of the Debian standard sources. Then, you could "speed up" development for thiose components you consider most important as much as you like without hurting the rest of the Debian project. On the way, contribute your improvements back to Debian so that they can (over time) integrate your enhancements into the standard debian syste, (which spans many architecures.... there is a good reason why things much not move too fast). I definitely think that Progeny development has been cut short prematurely, and it is most unfortunate.

                The existence of Progeny has at least as much justification as that of Mandrake. Being a "geek" is not the only reason to want a better system, and Progeny is still the best place for a newbie to start in my mind, as it is the easiest path to the stability and quality of a Debian system. The only reason I can see for Red Hat is if it is already company policy, because of long term support contracts already paid for. In this case, there is no reason to have Mandrake as the "easier Red Hat" as the support contracts likely won't cover the distinct distribution. If you are looking for a new support contract, I would still suggest Progeny, as they provide support for ANY Debian distro, including Progeny Debian. SuSE and TurboLinux are still valuable in Germany and Japan, respectively, though Debian is making much headway in those areanas as well.

                Slackware is good if you already know it, and for current slackware users I would not recommend switching distros if it has everything you need. If you want to have a very "Unixy" system, as opposed to the fluff that Linux distros provide, Slackware is a good choice. I feel you are right in this aspect when it comes to "the geekier crowd", or those who are staunch in having a Unix that still feels like Unix. If you aren't a current Slack user, and you want a Unix system for the sake of Unix purity, especially for development, I'd probably suggest that you go with one of the BSDs instead. There are some that say that the *BSD Ports/Packages system is better than Apt... but I can' comment on that as of yet. For standard development I'd probably suggest NetBSD, unless you are directly on the internet, or have a multi-proc system.

                Oh, BTW, I choose Debian, and for me the installer was a big deal. If you've never tried it, the Debian-cd image maker was an unpleasant bitch, especially behind my company's firewall. Having a cable-modem and boot floppies is much nicer, but I didn't have that luxury when I first tried Debian. I remember a tear of joy at finding the progeny ISO on their website when they first came out... I way anything but malcontent at that point.
      • Having an optional download with an X-based installer with autodetection would be great.

        Right now you can download Debian installs that support different filesystems - they just aren't the official installer. Just make it an alternate download option. Why not? The code is there, it has been tested, and making installtion easier for users that like graphical installs is just a good thing to do.
        • Great, so some individual can create an unofficial X-based installer, good for them. The problem that I pointed out was having development being diluted with both a console installer and an X-based installer. It would be better to have development of the installer focused entirely on making a good console installer.

      • Re:Porting the Progeny Installer to Woody (Score:4, Insightful)

        by mandolin ( 7248 ) on Tuesday November 20, 2001 @07:45PM (#2593284)
        Hardware autodetection is great, if you don't mind having it simply not work and freezing a user's system every once in a while.

        Which is why autodetection should be an install option, and not mandatory. The hangs you describe mostly happen with legacy ISA devices that don't support probing. Barring sloppy programming, your freezes should occur less and less.

        It's not hard to just have a person enter in their hardware.

        That's lazy programmer syndrome (I should know, I've got a bad case of it) .. it can be hard for the user. For instance, it's been a couple of years since I got my oem matrox g200 and now it's kindof hard to remember if it came with 4 or 8 megs of ram...

      • The Debian installer is easy, as long as you know your hardware. Now, the two things that people most frequently site that supposedly would make it easier to use are hardware autodetection and the usage of an X installer.


        If you made that comment tongue-in-cheek, then I will laugh along with your great joke. That statement is quite accurate... however, you really can't say that it is easy overall. Debian is usually not aimed at your average, ordinary, everyday (my apologies to Mr. Walsh) computer users who don't understand the fact that sometimes you need to delve into your computer with a flashlight so that you can figure out what the actual chipset is on your old generic network card. Personally, I didn't see _that_ much of a problem with doing that, but your average computer user is going to disagree quite a bit.

        Hardware autodetection is great, if you don't mind having it simply not work and freezing a user's system every once in a while. It's not hard to just have a person enter in their hardware.


        Again, I think that entering in your hardware isn't the best solution. It will work in a pinch (aka, as a last resort), but you can do so much more to detect what is going on (as has been demonstrated on many platforms). However, there are always going to be those cards and devices that you just can't detect, as they didn't include anything that allows you to detect them!!! So, you can win some of the time, but you can't win all of the time.
    • Sure upgrading to a new distro with Progeny is easy if you have a dsl/calbe modem/ or ethernet but what about use slow 56k users? I would of switched to debian long time ago if I could get high speed access. The problem is that debian has few new packages but offer them as a download if you really want them. This is not an option for modem users. I heard that even mp3 is not supported by defualt because its not free enough according to RMS. Is this true? I don't want to spend days downloading packages just to use my system. Not to mention many packages are obsolete. This is good in some ways because I find RedHat and Mandrake too bleeding edge. To me its just not worth it. I am upgrading to Freebsd 4.4 because the cvsup is alot less intesive on low bandwith modems then apt-get. ALso they are more cautious about adding new packages then redhat or mandrake but they offer packages that are new on the expansion disks. I am also sick of RPM hell of redhat, Suse and Mandrake. Boy I wish I had a t1 and debian right now.

      • How often do you need to upgrade to a new distro? If you only have Progeny CDs, then just use Progeny Newton release. It includes xmms and mpg123. If you find that a few applications aren't recent enough for you, then you need only upgrade those individual components and their specific dependancies. Downloading a handful of .debs is hardly more bandwidth intensive than a full CVSup. If you have a Debian Woody CD, then that is even better, doing a full system update (but staying with your current release) is no more intensive than a FreeBSD cvsup. Either way, installing from floppies and Downloading will be dialup hell for either FreeBSD or Debian.

        Broadband is only important if you are installing a full system or making a significant upgrade. The advantage to updating but sticking to a major release in Debian or cvsup in FreeBSD is the low delta means less download time. If you are planning to install Progeny Debian Newton release, then upgrading to Debian Woody over dialup, I'd advise against it.
      • I heard that even mp3 is not supported by defualt because its not free enough according to RMS. Is this true?

        I suggest reading Slashdot a little less. It's true that mp3 *encoders* are encumbered by obnoxious patents, so we can't distribute them, but mp3 *players* are plentiful. And we of course distribute the Ogg Vorbis encoder, which produces much better and smaller sound files than MP3. [0]

        Daniel (listening to MP3s in the background)
        [0] I don't remember if this is included in potato, but it will be in woody.
    • Sure its not difficult to change a text file full of URLs and then type "apt-get update" and "apt-get dist-upgrade" (which would automatically upgrade your entire OS from Progeny to Woody), but then again, I have seen people claim that its difficult to install applications on Linux, which is as easy as typing "apt-get install whateveryouwant".

      I keep seeing Debian people claiming that everything is simple (even ze orchestra is beautiful) if you know the magic incantation "apt-get".

      It ain't so.

      To be able to do that successfully, you have to have

      1) managed to install Debian right the first time

      2) either high bandwidth or the ability to tie up your phone line for a near infinite amount of time

      3) either a modem or an ethernet card that you have somehow gotten to work the first time.

      I have been trying to install Debian for the past two weeks on a laptop without either floppy drive or a functioning network connection, here in an area where there are, as closely as I can tell, no other Linux users, much less a LUG. Unlike those who have infinite time to diddle their boxen for fun, I'm putting Linux on it for a particular purpose, which has a deadline.

      Following the advice of seasoned users, I went with the "stable" release, then upgraded to kernel 2.4.13, which required stuff from "unstable", as did lots of the apps that I needed to run. To install these things, I've had to

      a) download the files to my desktop Mandrake system over a slow phone line, following dependencies by hand while trying to remember what I had already downloaded to not duplicate effort

      b) since I can't seem to write data CDs on the Linux box (I can write audio CDs via cdrdao, but no other software seems to be able to speak to my CD-R drive), transfer the files over the home LAN via Samba (which is mysteriously slow)

      c) burn them to CD on the windows box then walk the CD over to the laptop

      d) try to install, find out that I've missed a file, and have to go through the ridiculous process again.

      I'd be tempted to just leave Win98 there, except that the much smaller latencies in Linux (especially with an appropriately patched kernel) are important in the near-real-time sound processing that I need to do. And I believe in the whole Linux thing. It's just maddening down here in the trenches.

      FWIW, I gave up on Debian last night and am installing Mandrake, which, yes, I was able to walk into a store and purchase off the shelf, and which I've installed on other systems before.

      I'd like to try Debian again, maybe when I can afford a high speed connection again (yes, another laid-off dotcommer). Or maybe some ruby slippers will appear to make "apt-get" faintly useful.
      • Following the advice of seasoned users

        Be careful about people who call themselves "seasoned users", they often don't know what they're talking about.

        upgraded to kernel 2.4.13, which required stuff from "unstable"

        Adrian Bunk has prepared packages to run 2.4 kernels on stable, available here [fs.tum.de]

        a) download the files to my desktop Mandrake system over a slow phone line, following dependencies by hand while trying to remember what I had already downloaded to not duplicate effort

        .
        .
        .
        FWIW, I gave up on Debian last night and am installing Mandrake, which, yes, I was able to walk into a store and purchase off the shelf, and which I've installed on other systems before.

        Allow me to tell you a parable:

        A man wished to purchase a car. He had to choose between an offering from Ford and an offering from Mitsubishi. (no reason for choosing these, they're just the first car companies that spring to mind)

        So, in search of expert advice, he went to the house of his friend Fred, the amateur mechanic. Fred put his own cars together from spare parts all the time, and the man knew that he would have the answers. He found Fred in his garage, tinkering with some unidentifiable piece of metal in an engine.

        "Fred," the man said, "should I buy a Ford or a Mitsubishi?" Fred paused, wiping some grime off his face, and said, "well, my last couple cars were Fords. You can get 'em real cheap if you buy the spare parts the factories would throw away anyway. Got my last car that way, and she's a beaut!"

        So the man headed off to the local car factory, planning to buy the parts. He faithfully bought each part on a list Fred had made. This was very hard, because he had to buy each part from a separate factory, and he had to carry the parts home by hand, not having a car. Worse, he had to return several parts when he bought the wrong one.

        After spending much time and money, he finally decided that Fred was wrong. Going to a local car dealer, he walked in and said, "I want a Mitsubishi." The dealer was helpful and cooperative, and an hour later, the man drove away in his new Mitsubishi, vowing never to purchase Ford again.

        Now, one would think this man did not do the most wise thing possible -- after all, who would try to buy a car in parts, then compare it to buying a car from a dealer? But that sort of comparison is exactly what you're making.

        If you've got the laptop set up, you should probably just leave it. But in the future you might want to do some simple research, including finding vendors [debian.org] who sell CDs of Debian. I understand that CheapBytes [cheapbytes.com] is particularly popular.

        You might consider waiting, however, until Woody is released, as it will be a major step forward in terms of included software. Currently, it looks like Woody will be released sometime in December or January...but don't quote me on that.

        Daniel
        • Adrian Bunk has prepared packages to run 2.4 kernels on stable

          Yup, I'd hunted down and installed those, which worked like a charm. It was upgrading the apps which drove me nuts.

          "Fred," the man said, "should I buy a Ford or a Mitsubishi?" Fred paused, wiping some grime off his face, and said, "well, my last couple cars were Fords. You can get 'em real cheap if you buy the spare parts the factories would throw away anyway. Got my last car that way, and she's a beaut!"

          That's a good parable, though I would think the files Debian provides would be a hair better than "the spare parts the factories would throw away". And actually, the parts were OK.

          As another analogy, imagine being told, "Just put these parts in a pile and zap them with this here ray gun". So you get the parts, get the ray gun, point it at them, and out pops a little flag saying that to use it, you have to get just one more part, but it's in a lion's cage. So you fight the lion, get the part, install it, try the ray gun again, and it excretes a little blob of penguin poop, which congeals to tell you that actually you need one *more* part, which is at the bottom of the ocean. And so on...

          BTW, I did get the potato disks from LinuxMall. In retrospect, maybe I should have swallowed my uncertainty and just gotten the Woody disks, rather than believing that upgrading piecemeal was the better approach.

          I look forward to its release. Unfortunately, that will be too late to be used in my project *sigh*

    • Will the Progeny OS installer be ported to Woody?

      Yes. Work is currently underway to do this, after which the Progeny installed will be submitted to Debian as a new package.

      Freely licensed, of course.

  • his children? It's fun to read the subjects without knowing their computer connection.
  • The first time I read the title, I thought it said: "Steven Schafer On The Future of Pornography".

  • He says there is too many Distros

    When hes basing a distro off of a distro called Debian!!!!

    Hes one to talk!

    And he says the economy is bad? Redhats doing fine, The economy is bad for everyone not just linux, but a good business plan will get you through it.
    • He says there is too many Distros
      He's not stating anything new here...

      When hes basing a distro off of a distro called Debian!!!
      Progeny is no longer basing a distro off of Debian. Progen Debian is discontinued. But I still suggest it to those who are new to Linux and are looking for something resonably up to date, easy to install, and stable. Yesh, every now and then the installer will faill miserably and someone will get all pissed about it on /. or a LUG list, but what about the people who are quietly running happily along?

      Anyway, Progeny is a great steping stone between Potato and Woody. You get your XFree4, apt-get goodness, GNOME 1.4, what more could you ask for? KDE? Well, the KDE packages in Progeny are in a sad shape, but KDE is really easy to compile from source. You might learn something

      Sig: No games in linux? Only you CAN change that! The answer is http://www.transgaming.com

      Naw, there are better answers. But that's off topic so we won't be going there... :)
    • He says there is too many Distros.

      When hes basing off of a distro called Debian!!!!

      Progeny Debian, although based on many Debian core ideas (the APT suite, etc.), was really designed to make things much easier for the first-time user. It provided things like an X-based installation system, a graphical package manager, and hand-holding throughout the entire install and setup process. While Progeny Debian was based on Debian, it still required a lot of work: keeping a separate set of .deb packages (it sort of sat in between the stable and testing releases, incorporating more new packages without Debian's extensive testing process), developing an easy-to-understand install process (no easy task!), keeping a trained support staff, and maintaining documentation. While it may not have been as challenging as building a sucessful distro from scratch, it certainly had its share of challenges.

  • It's a shame that so many Linux based companies have gone under or shifted focus because of the economic slump. However, the code isn't going anywhere, and when the economy begins to rise again, Linux will be there, and many new companies will form around it again.

  • On 7/27/00 I wrote ( here [slashdot.org]) a pretty seriously negative set of comments about PLS. It had 7 points:
    1 Has no net bearing on the present.
    2 NOW is dead as far as PLS is concerned.
    3 The timeline went to infinity.
    4 Has no net bearing on the present.
    5 BINGO. No business PLAN, no net nothing.
    6 They've moved once (twice?) so far.
    7 They got a lot of warm bodys and then RIFfed many of them when round two funding didn't happen. Many had moved to Indy from distant places. The toll in people is the worst part of this deal (unless you invested in this thing).

    I am not slamming Ian or anyone else here. My point is this company, like so many of the other dotcoms, needed skilled, experienced, professional management from the outset to assure the basics of business were followed. The venture capitalists were at serious fault for not assuring that these rules were followed and as a result they lost (or have nearly lost) all their investment.

    I wish PLS lots of luck in the services arena. Rumor has it that they have a positive net cashflow doing services. If they can keep these customers and carefully manage their growth they can flower into a cool, competent Unix/Linux oriented consulting house. The world could certainly use more of those... Linux space or not.

    -- Multics

  • I have to say, I love Open Source. I have been playing with Debian on a server I have almost religiously. Its freeeken cool. Apt-get is a monumental achivement. Actually, I think that Debian in general is a monumental achivement. The incredible country-like atmosphere: voting, bug reports, elected officials, a clear and distinct vision. All of this is very very good.

    My experiences with setting up this latest debian server have been nothing more than wonderful. As much as I like the slackware model of "pure simplicity" I like the mode of Debians package management. I do not get the args against it. When it works, it works, even of there are some problems. hey there always has to be some problems.

    The fact of the matter is getting debian setup is a bit of a chore. i am not one to think that the "installer" is a problem. Installing seems AOK for me- at least the base install. The trouble is when you get into having to do the dselect part of the install, which of course you end up having to do.

    deslect aint so bad really. Its just that there are *tons* of packages. It makes it confusing for the average user. I know Debian says that the average user is no good for debian. I think quite simply that the social contract says otherwise.

    debian needs to be excited about anyone who decides to go with the platform they have created.

    And what a good platform they have created.

    Freedom truly is the issue. And freedom truly is a goodthing(tm).

    On that note, I installed Mandrake 8.1 one tonight on a machine I use for my main Workstation. Just for kicks. Just to see how things are. Just to see how things went. I ma quite impressed. I have to say that I love being up and running with a wonderful, kick ass GUI with a minimum of muss and fuss for my workstation machine. I am sorry. I just do not want to spend hours fucking with my workstation: I can do that with my servers for hours. But to get a GUI based fully functional machine running with a minimum of effort is totally sweet for me. I have to say I hate the services and crap that are running on Mandrake, I hate the installer and do not think for a second that Debian should emulate the kind of crap install process that Mandrake *imposes* on the user. But there is something about having hardware pretty much setup, having the desktop pretty much ready to go if needed that really rocks. Especially when you want ot get down to work, doing something besides tweeking your setup.

    I love debian. But Debian has some things to learn from the whole Mandrake process.

    Do not make it as stupid, make it as functional.
  • Persoanlly I always thought the idea of NOW was really interesting. Unfortunately the interview is short on details on this topic. Basically it's referred to as "flawed from the beginning" or something.

    Does anyone know what went wrong with it, or if anything went right? I mean, it's more of a "dotnet" idea then anything Microsoft has thought of, it would be great to have it up and running. (And from what I've understood there are several achademic OS's that operate along the lines of Linux NOW.)

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