Linux.ie :: Progeny Install Review

Home

::Reviews

::Tips

planetILUG

The process:

The PC in question would not boot from CD, so I used the boot disk provided.
The system booted, and once it saw the CD, it loaded the graphical install screen.

The first question is where to install. You are given three options:

The entire drive.
Overwrite everything.
Free space.
This will attempt to find free space and install there. I didn't use this as I wanted to wipe the WindowsNT installation that I didn't have the passwords for anyway.
Custom.
Lets you create the partitions manually. I've used this on other installs, but not this one. It has a rather nice graphical tool to create and name partitions.
It has a few known bugs, though. These are documented in the README files, so read them.

I used the entire drive option. This warned me that it would erase the entire drive and did I want to continue?
This created two partitions on the drive. hda1 for swap, 130M and hda2 the rest for everything else. I prefer to create extra partitions, but this was the default.
It then created the filesystem and installed the base installation. After this you re-boot the system from the hard drive and the install continues.
The system correctly detected my ISA network card and even the S3 Trio64 video, though XFree86 4.0 failed to start correctly. I had to loop through the 3.3.6 xservers to configure the video. This still failed twice before it ran properly.

The monitor selection gives three options as well:

Simple.
Select the size of your monitor and it will guess the rest for you.
Medium.
Select the best resolution your monitor can do.
Advanced.
This is the one everyone is used to. You specify the specs for your monitor directly.

I chose medium and had to try twice. I used 1024X768@70Hz, but I only got 800X600. I suppose that is the best I could get.

The install never asked my what keyboard I use, but then it only supports American systems at the moment, though it did let me set the right time zone via a Windows-like control. It asked me for a root password and to set up a user. This screen also has an option for 'strong' passwords or 'UNIX' compatible passwords.
I selected 'strong', but when everything was finished, the passwords for both root and the user I created were blank!!!

After configuring a few more things like network info and such, it installs the 'Minimum' system, which is quite complete. Once this was installed and configured, it then gives you a rather nice GUI for installing extra packages by category.

Gnome desktop
Debian development packages
Mozilla
Netscape
Apache

and many other options. You just tick the box next to the packages you want installed and then click the install button. This calls dpkg with a variety of options to install each group.

Once everything is installed, you can re-boot one last time and log in.

As I said, because I used the 'strong' passwords option, the root and user passwords were blank. A simple passwd fixed this, but it should never happen.

Finally I logged into the system via gdm. The gdm login gives you the option to select the desktop as either Gnome, xsession, default or last. The boxed set also contains an extras CD, but I could not get the add/remove software tool to recognise the CD.

I used apt-cdrom add to add the second CD. I then used dselect to install task-kde, which properly installed the majority of KDE2.0 onto my system. By loggin out of the Gnome session, gdm then gave the the added option of KDE. kdm, on the other hand, does not recognise other desktops/window managers without manual intervention, which is why I still use gdm.

The result:

After this, I've got a fully working Progeny Debian Linux system running. Even with the low spec of the PC, it's still rather snappy. Being Debian-based, a simple apt-get update, apt-get dist-upgrade will update the system on-line with little intervention.

I've also got this system running on my Dual PII350, though this was installed from the first BETA and updated incrementally. I also used The boxed set to install this on my Daughters PC, which is shared with Windows95. To avoid any troubles between grub and Windows, I created a bootdisk and she uses this to boot Linux when she wants to, which is much more than Windows.

This system is also fully compatible with the KDE2.1 .deb's available from kde.debian.net A simple apt-get update, apt-get dist-upgrade will update KDE automagically. Or you can just not install KDE2.0 and just apt-get install task-kde to get everything. Though it is recommended to use dselect to be sure of getting all the recommends and suggests.

The only other down-side to using Progeny was that it didn't detect my ISA Crystal sound card. It took me a while to figure it out, as I am useless with kernel modules. I know that the RedHat soundconfig tool works, but as Debian is very different to RedHat in regards to config file locations it could not be used.

I've had very few problems with any of my systems. The only difficulty lately was getting mp3 ripping support due to the copy-right problems. I was able to get grip, but I had to fetch and install bladeenc manually.

To properly support CD-Rewriters, ALL cdroms use the ide-scsi module. My CD-Rewriter worked flawlessly with xcdroast without any interventions on my part.

The Summary:

This is a rather nice and professional GUI-based install and it's Debian too! There are a few small problems/glitches to be carefull of, but nothing worse than trying to install Windows. Even though I did the BETA testing and got the boxed set free, I will try to be impartial.

For Linux Beginners:

I can not really recommend this install for the complete beginner. There are a few things that can go wrong during install, so you would want to know a bit about Linux before installing this. Aside from the install, once the system is set-up, you have a full Debian-based system running Gnome that anyone can use. If you add KDE2.1 from kde.debian.net, you can have KDE2.1 running that any former Windows user will feel at home with, but still have the full power of Linux!

For the rest of you:

This is a full Debian-based system. The Debian package management is, IMHO, far superior to RedHat and apt-get is the greatest tool. Just point a source.list file to any Debian mirror and just install anything. All dependencies are taken care of for you. I actually installed a base system, I.E. console-only, did apt-get update, apt-get install task-kde and the system installed ALL the X packages and everything, then configured it up and a re-boot started kdm and I could log into KDE directly! The only non-debian system I've used was Mandrake. I found this to be quite condensending compared to Debian. Even my Daughter thought this was only a child's distribution!

I hope this is helpfull to anyone looking for a Linux system.

Cheers,

John Gay

About the author, John Gay.

USERS COMMENTS

Maintained by the ILUG website team. The aim of Linux.ie is to support and help commercial and private users of Linux in Ireland. You can display ILUG news in your own webpages, read backend information to find out how. Networking services kindly provided by HEAnet, server kindly donated by Dell. Linux is a trademark of Linus Torvalds, used with permission. No penguins were harmed in the production or maintenance of this highly praised website. Looking for the Indian Linux Users' Group? Try here. If you've read all this and aren't a lawyer: you should be!