Progeny Announces Graphical Installer for Debian Woody

jdaily writes "In light of recent negative reviews of Debian in which the installer was roundly criticized, this announcement may have particular timeliness and relevance: Progeny has made available an i386 Debian 3.0 (woody) installer image based on PGI, the Progeny Graphical Installer. This is available at Progeny's free software archive." I've installed Debian so many times that I've just learned to cope with the installer, but this is a much needed boost.

screenshots?

Wheres the screenshots? :P

Re:screenshots?

Try these [progeny.com].

The default debian installer is intimidating

The first time I went to install Debian it was pretty intimidating with dozens of packages all over the place I didn't know what the hell was going on so I decided to go back to good ol' RedHat 6.2. Trusty and reliable I always say!

Re:The default debian installer is intimidating

Yeah, Debian can be like that. You either know exactly which packages you want, or you grab at random, or use something like tasksel to start you off. Tasksel is actually very useful, although sometimes it will install more than you want. Of course, that's better than not installing enough.

In addition, the guys in #debian on irc.debian.org (once the openprojects.net server, who knows what the deal is now with the fundraising fiasco) are extremely helpful if you're trying to figure things out, lost, or just tinkering around.

Why now?

This installer has been available to the Debian developers for how long? 2 years? It's unbelievable that they haven't been using it earlier. No, they had to write it from scratch, and it is still not finished.

Re:Why now?

The Progeny installer has three major problems:

• It doesn't work on most of the architectures supported by Debian (does it even work on anything but i386?)
• It is geared toward CD installs, its support for network installs is just not good enough.
• It's too much work to make a installer. The Debian people hope to have a installable version of testing available at all times, but that's just too much work with PGI.

Re:Why now?

Grow up Debian, stop trying to be all things and the most egalitarian OS in the world and make some hard decisions. Drop about 10 architectures from the release cycle and at least half of those 8,000 packages for starters.

What, then, would be the point of Debian? What you are describing is just about every other commercial distro out there - so why do we need another one? Debian works this way because there is a need for a distro that works this way. The commercial ones won't, because as you pointed out, there's no demand, so what's wrong with debian doing so? It fills a gap, albeit a very small gap, that no other distro does, and that makes it priceless. If you don't like Debian, use something else, but I don't see why it bothers you what they do - they're not asking you for money, or time, or anything. They're just doing there own thing. You don't start harping on about the local table-tennis club because, let's face it no-one plays table tennis - hey, why don't they play football or basketball or something "normal"? I think the simple answer is that they don't want to, and while they're not playing table-tennis in the middle of your football field, why should you care? If the table-tennis club exists it's because at least 2 people want to play table tennis.

Graphical installer so ...

... will I need a mouse to install my system ?

Re:Graphical installer so ...

... will I need a mouse to install my system ?

Nah, use an eight-year-old child - they're much better suited.

It just struck me exactly how bad that advice would sound out of context.

I love debians installer

Fair enough it might be intimidating to a 'new' user, but its the only installer ive ever used that offers me the flexibility i need. Ive used mandrake, SuSE, lycoris, corel and red hat and with any of those distributions it is impossible to do something that the devlopers didnt think of in advance. Debians installer lets you configure your system in as much detail as you want, and install from a large variety of mediums (various network, physical etc). All in all, id be suprised to see anyone improve it, making it graphical is just eye candy, you cant provide anything 'extra', you just make it more pleasing to the eye.

Re:I love debians installer

Decent systems, like Debian or FreeBSD, you only install once!

If you only have one machine.

dd if=/dev/hda1 of=/dev/hdb1

Re:I love debians installer

That's exactly how I feel. On the other hand, I know many people who want to use Debian for that same flexibility later on (apt-getting packages at a later stage) but have problems with the initial install and getting the right set of starter packages on the machine.

I, for one, will stick with the ncurses generic Debian install, for it is what I use and like, but I will also welcome the graphical installer, for it will be quite helpful to other people and bring more people over to use Debian who were initially scared away by the hardcore install.

In other words, I don't see this as a matter of improving the install, but simply making it more readily available to those for whom the install was previously too complicated for. This is a good thing.

[I apologize for any incoherence in the previous statements, I'm running on no sleep... again.]

ScreenShots

For those that are interested here are screenshots of PGI v0.9.6

http://hackers.progeny.com/pgi/screenshots/

Clickable link

A clickable version of the above link [progeny.com]. (Posting as a coward since I am no karma whore.)

Re:ScreenShots

Listen dude, I am not interested in screenshots of a Woody!!

I think ill just stick to

network.img from mandrake. This boot disk allows you to install from the internet WITH A GRAPHICAL installer and USES UPTO DATE SOFTWARE. Im using it right now, and Ive never looked back.

They should have done this a long time ago

It drives me crazy that with the incredible talent behind Debian the install process is such a pain. Installing Suse, Mandrake and RH are not harder to install than installing Windows XP or OS X. Installing freeBSD is confusing until you find a few hours after you think you mastered sysinstall a kind soul at a bsd chatroom tells you to use the ports instead.

Installing Debian (or Gentoo) is just too damn confusing. I admire what Debian and Gentoo are aiming for, but they need to come up with a no-hassle installer.

Re:They should have done this a long time ago

Debian is not aimed at simple minds. It's done by developers for developers/power users. If you're n00b, then you should start with some other distro, with some available commersial support.
Then, When that becomes too limiting, move on to debian. At that point debian installer is not confusing, but raher powerful. (I just installed debian from scratch after disk failure, so I know what I'm talking about). That install of mine was first in 3-4 years.

Re:They should have done this a long time ago

What I see you argueing is that the debian installer is purposefully left hard to use because it helps to keep the less skilled from using debian.

Well if you see that, then your vision is clearly better than mine, because I didn't say such thing. All I said that debian installer is not aimed at n00bs. It doesn't mean that it was done so on purpouse.

Frankly, improving installer that is already fully functional and is used for approx 15min out of 3-4 years of uptime, seems a bit ridiculous to me. If you want to do it, then go ahead, this is a free world, but demanding people doing this for free, is a bit fat for me.

The dialogs are clumsy

I took a look at the screenshots, and the dialogs don't seem very polished. They should hire GUI designer or something.

What?

A picture of Tux holding a glass of beer in the top left corner isn't graphical enough for you???

cross-platform?

If Debian remains true to it's high standards, no graphical installer will make it into a stable distribution unless it works for every platform supported by Debian.

So, sure, go ahead, use the Progeny one... but do make it work on (Ultra)Sparc, Alpha, Amiga, Atari ST, PA/RISC, S390, whatever... not so easy, is it?

Guys, remember, there's more to Linux than just x86!

Re:cross-platform?

The next generation Debian installer is designed to be modular (the idea is that the same installer will be usable on all architectures, including the Hurd and BSD ports). It's possible that graphical modules will be available, but this won't compromise the functionality of the text based install.

On the other hand, refusing to provide a graphical installer because it doesn't work on all supported hardware isn't a sensible attitude only. There are items of hardware that are never going to support a graphical install (I've a Sun with no framebuffer here) - should Debian refuse to allow graphical installs as a result?

Plese don't ever make this the default

I fail to see why this is any better than the standard text installation. Worse, it requires a graphical display, so you then enter the fb/X11 compatability issues. Whats wrong with a text installer? You're only going to be looking at it for say, an hour at the very most, right?

Does the graphical frontend actually offer any significant additions over the text one?

Re:Plese don't ever make this the default

Does the graphical frontend actually offer any significant additions over the text one?

Hardware autodetection. Fewer questions asked. It's not just a graphical version of the standard Debian install, it's something a great deal closer to the Red Hat or Mandrake installers.

Debian will always have a text installer available, because it supports platforms which may not have graphical capabilities. Doing a graphical install over a serial console is, uhm, tricky.

Graphical installer?

Hm... It's probably time to move over Debian.. Hey, what's the name of that distro without graphical installer? Gotta try it...

Debian installation difficulties are exaggerated

(Disclaimer: it's been over a year since I did my Debian install, and my memory is somewhat fuzzy).

The first part of a Debian install, where you make disk partitions, set the hostname etc. is similar enough to a RedHat text-mode install (of which I've done several) that it didn't faze me. I don't think that part of the Debian install is difficult at all.

The difficult part is the second stage of the installation: selecting packages with tasksel/dselect. I took one look at it and just hit "quit". That gave me a base install, with nothing else. However, there's more than one way to skin a cat: I used apt-cdrom/apt-get to install all the rest of the stuff I wanted.

I'm not saying that Joe Average would/should be happy with apt-get from the command line; I'm saying that it's dead easy for someone with only a small amount of Unix/Linux experience to use, and it's much easier than dselect. It's perfectly possible to install Debian without wrestling with dselect.

-Stephen

Mix and match?

Is there any way to just simply mix and match different disks? I'm wondering if you could install the PGI-enabled first CD, then when tasksel or whatever prompts you for additional CDs, use the other 6 in the set. I get the impression you can't, as the Progeny site talks about creating your own installer CDs (plural, not singular).

Debian ain't for n00bz. Get over it.

That's what you pay distributors for, y'know? Honestly, if you wanna switch from 'doze to Linux, you'll best be of on a money-making distro (or give that money to the Linux geek-friend for him setting up a system for you).
Yet I don't get the heavy RH bias on /. - seems from the measily 30% of slashdotters using Linux regularly, 90% use RH with no knowlege of what's going on in the rest of the *nix world.
Anyway, you want a graphic installer? I recommend SuSE and for good reasons [slashdot.org] too.

Oh no, a graphical installer

Why is everybody whining about the disadvantages with a graphical installer?

Ok, so the text-installer *works*, but that's just bearly. You will have to work a lot of things out by yourself, specially when it comes to hardware detection.

As it is today, it seems like Debian is only for people with an already extended knowledge about Linux, and these people wants to keep the difficult ancient text-only installer to "keep the newbies away" from Debian, and make it a distro for the experts.

This is not the right way. Linux should be for *everybody*, not just those who can understand the way-too-difficuly installer.

The best would of course be to have both at graphical installer AND the text-only installer. Then the hardcore Debian users could still use the text-only installer since they seem to like it so much, and we mortals could use the nice GUI installer. Then both partys would be happy.

Why isn't it so already?

I'd like to see a better text-based installer

Making the installer graphical in itself doesn't make any difference towards ease of use. Hardware detection and less technical questions do, but that can be done in a text-based installer as well, with the added bonus that you don't need X just for the install.

I haven't had any problems with the Debian installer , but I can understand it can be daunting to a newbie. Allthough I've seen Debian installations done by people not too acquainted with Linux (but they did have experience with other OSes (sp?)).

Anyway, I'm confident the Debian developers will come up with a decent installer by the time Sarge is promoted to stable.

Debian installer rocks

I don't care whether an installer is graphical or not, as long as it works. And having installed Debian, Redhat, and Gentoo lately, I have to say that the Debian install was the only one that went without even the slightest problem, quite contrary to Redhat (failed when configuring X, machine locked up, reboot, finish install manually) and Gentoo (trouble with the PCMCIA ethernet card).

Plus, Debian doesn't have a multi-Gb default install full of crap, contrary to some other distros ...

Show them what you got

Hardcore Linux guru's are respected because they can pull off anything in Linux. Well I say this: it's about time the Hardcore Debian hackers show the world what they can do and create an installer that can put distros like RedHat & Madrake to shame.

Just my two cents,

Yuioup

Such a strong base, such a weak Installer

Beautiful distros like Knoppix are being released with their foundation being debian. Debian and redhat are the two most morphed distros around, but debians granularity, robustness and general goodness and quality beats up redhat in these departments exactly.

If they would add a graphic installer, I hope the next debian wouldnt jump into an X installer by default. Theres a particular strength in the level of control and flexibility that debian has now and shouldnt be sacrificed no matter how many grandmas are waiting for it. If you dont like debian use knoppix, or morph it yourself into another prettier distro. I am using knoppix now and will always use a distro on top of debian, dselect, no matter how pretty you make it, will be uugggly.

That was quick!

Complaint to reaction time around a day. Something that a known not named software companie could learn from.

it still asks a lot of stupid questions

Whether graphical or text based, Linux installers still ask too many unnecessary questions, and usually at the wrong time. RedHat or Mandrake's installers may be graphical, but they are just as annoying.

There are only very few questions that the installer really, really needs to ask the user, and for those, a text interface should be sufficient.

Want to really convert the Windows crowd?

Having done a Debian as my first shot at Linux for our company - I have to say that the installer gives WAY too many options that require you to be pretty familiar with the hardware you're running. I ultimately was able to ask questions and get things fixed, but our average user doesn't want to have to learn that much about their hardware.

Red Hat was much simpler, and did a better job at probing and giving me reasonable defaults. It still had some goofs - but I was able to get the system running at a baseline so that I was fixing things "within" the system rather than from the outside.

Getting the installer "right" with reasonable guidance for the newbie, and options to override for the expert, seems to be one of the seemingly simple but incredibly difficult things that most distributions still need to get right.

Of course, the other thing I would like to see most distributions understand is that many people are bringing Linux into a Windows world. So having support from the install for Windows networks (mapped drives and authentication) would make it much easier to put on more desktops.

My .03 worth...

Am I the only one who uses software raid?

Am I?

More important...

A graphical installer is all good and well, but it's essentially the text-based version at a higher resolution.

What we need is more enhancements to the 3.0 one -- i.e. better hardware detection, more linear structure, easier questions etc. Text mode is fine, as early RH installers proved.

Oh, and as for dselect: as others have pointed out, you don't have to use it. I've installed Debian 2.1 and 2.2 on some old laptops recently, and I just quit out of it straight away and use "dpkg -i" for whatever files I need.

Woah! Slow down there

Maybe I've been in the Debian camp too long but...

Linux has a graphical user interface? Is that like Macintosh or something?

I dont understand what's wrong with Debian install

The step by step process is extremely simple to follow, even the first time. Sure, hardware autodetection could be a plus and I have never found a use for tasksel and tasksel's idea of what can be useful for a particular task, but I really don't understand why Debian frightens people so much. Agreed, the first time use of dselect requires to read the help screen at least once to remember a handful of keys, but that's all. After that one can enjoy the bliss of installing whole packages and dependancies in very few keystrokes.

But on the other hand, maybe I love Debian too much to see any faults in it.

More information...

PGI does support ia64 as well as i386, and developers outside of Progeny are working on powerpc. The design is modular, to minimize the work required to make it functional on other architectures (although "minimize" should not imply that it's easy).

We hope to have ia64 CDs available shortly, but given the relative market shares of the two platforms, we wanted to make the i386 images available without waiting for ia64.

Other recent developments at Progeny include the release of Discover 2.0 [progeny.com], a cross-platform extensible hardware identification library and tool; Progeny Graphical Installer (PGI) 1.0 [progeny.com], which contrary to its name is properly an installer creation system; and the announcement of Platform Services [progeny.com], a subscription service that makes it easier for companies to develop and maintain Linux-powered products and services.

Quality of reviews is decreasing.

Do you notice that more and more of the review spent their time on installation process ? I have even the feeling that review are just for the installation process.

I am a 3 years Debian user (Redhat and Mdk before). Recently, I wanted to have a look on other distro in order to see the global improvement and how they perform in daily desktop usage.

To save time, I started to have a look at all this review on RedHat and Mdk (I use debian unstable everyday so no need for a review :) ). I was frustated: none have a clue on daily usage. The install process is well described but ... just few words to almost no word on desktop/usage experience ... Problem of reviewer skill or lack of time ? Does users really spend their time reinstalling their distro (Windows habit too hard to drop :) )?

The installer is difficult?

I still can't get over these complaints that the Debian installer is hard. It requires that you know a little bit about your system. So what? All the guys I've seen in my lug know their machines in and out. So a newbie should be the only one to have a problem with it. Generally if a newbie has done any respectable amount of research they will find that Debian is not a newbie friendly distro. They'll find tons of people pointing them towards SUSE, or Mandrake, or Red Hat. Even with it's reputation of being hard on newbies, if you look on places like linuxnewbie and the like you'll find that there are tons of newbies that installed Debian with little or no difficulty.

With a week of linux experience in Mandrake I successfully installed Debian first try. I've done it several times since then. The only thing I can see is that people are put off by screens that don't have pretty little modern guis. That's the only reason I can fish out of people that find deselect so hard(who are generally the same ones who dislike the debian installer).

I'm happy that the people that wanted a gui have gotten a gui. Now they have to get around the programs like aptitude, dselect, or maybe even use a *gasp* terminal.

WTF is a graphical install going to do?

One of the reasons I became a Debian user a year ago is because I got tired of all the *Pretty* install screens every distro was trying to come up with... Finally I found a GNU/linux distro that allowed me to install linux the way I wanted it to be installed ( ex. base package set, reiserfs)... Not only that, it has a far better package management system than any of the others could ever dream of... All I got to say is, if you don't understand what the hell you are doing in the first place either RTFM or go find another distro and leave this one alone!!! I don't want a linux distro dumbed down for the *average* user, the market is already flooded with enough *PRETTY* distros for you to pick and choose!

Thanks

Thanks, Progeny! This is what free software is about. Debian provides a great base system, which works incredibly well for those who use it. Progeny has other ideas for it, so they extend it to work better for their target audience.

It's hard to complain about that.

Oh, except, it's stifling innovation, and commercialization. I forgot. Damn.

GREAT!

FINALLY, the biggest reason why i dont' use debian is its installer. Make a mistake and you get to restart everything

Installing Debian ...

Can be a royal PITA, and Dselect isn't the only problem. Some of the install questions are pure greek to the average linux newbe, and many current users of other distros. Dselect's UI is often user hostile.

But ..... I've managed to install Bo, Slink, Potato, and now Woody. I suffered with Dselect on the first two, found apt-get a refreshing change with Potato, and later used gnome-apt. Now if deb-config would get cleaned up.....
I still wouldn't use any other distro.

Re:woody?

Heh. Dork.

If you look at the history of Debian releases, you may just see the sequence:

1.1 - Buzz
1.2 - Rex
1.3 - Bo
2.0 - Hamm
2.1 - Slink
2.2 - Potato
3.0+ - Woody
Testing - Sarge
Unstable - Sid

But I bet that someone will still have to explain it more to some...

Ravenn

Re:What ?

The problem with installers is that by the time people understand the system enough to work out what the installer is asking for they are already familiar enough with the install process not to care.

Installers are *always* the first thing that people meet in a distribution. Doesn't matter how similar the underlying OS is to other products, if the installer appears to be unfriendly or asks questions that people don't understand they aren't going to get a lot further.

I found this when I moved from RedHat to Debian, it took me a few goes to work out what exactly the installation process was asking for. I would only recommend Debian to people who really understand both linux and their hardware, anyone else would just be put off before they even got the distribution up and running.

People can argue about why one distribution is 'better' than another, but one of RedHat's strengths is that it is a pretty-much automated install and the bits that require the user to tell the install process ask questions that the user can understand.

Re:Here we go ...

"unless your confusing standard RedHat Linux with Advanced Server." is the exact point that the zealots would be making. There should not be a differnce between the distros that RH makes. It should all do everything. I can understand having the installer let you do a little more customazation, say if you just want a web server it only installs apache perl etc, but I should not have to but that should just be choices everyone gets to make when they install. I have also used RH Mandrake Debian and Gentoo. I think RH and Mandrake are great for the linux newbie or the linux geek that does not want to get as into the inner workings of linux, but I think overall they are more restrictive to your use of linux, by tieing so much to their gui. And yes I know you can still do everything by the command line but how often people actualy do that as oposed to using the fast and dirty gui, and being limited to what it lets you do. Finaly I dont think anyone will disagree with the fact that RPM has the worst dependincies detection ever. That is the reason I left Mandrake. It is to easy to get into circular dependencies, and they are to tied to realeses. It would quickly get to the point where you just had to wait for the next realese becouse you could not upgrade with RPMs to a newer version becouse fo to many circular dependincies. You do not have this prob with debian at all. Once you get it up and running apt-get takes care of all of that for you.

Re:Here we go ...

Flamebait, but I'll bite :)
Debian might be more difficult to install, but where did you get the "RedHat pisses all over Debian in terms of quality and usability" from?

If by usability you mean "easy to install for grandma" perhaps, if not: please explain what makes RedHat better.

And for quality? If you define quality as having a stable system with packages that don't trash eachother, and is easy to keep secure. Then you are sadly mistaken. But if by quality you mean a system with new, hot and unstested packages and late security fixes, by all means RedHat must be of much higher quality.

- Ost

Re:debian

They're like the amish of linux, always using old outdated crap that everyone thinks is cute.

Or: ... always using old outdated crap that everyone *knows* work?

Do you need XFree 4.2 with KDE 3.1beta on you server? I don't.

- Ost

RE: debian -- not up to date

This was my biggest bain when I installed Debian earlier this week. I got through the install just fine (having installed Slackware, Redhat/text-mode, etc etc in the past), but when it came to using it I found all the software out of date. When I attempted to install a more current fluxbox package, my libc was out of date; and libraries are the only thing I want my packaging system to take care of for me.

There is a mass amount of 'testing' and 'unstable' packages, but I could not figure out how to get apt-get to look at them. apt-setup does not ask you which level you are willing to brave, and it should.

Sure, stable is great for a server, but can't I get something a little more current? How do you do it?

Re:PleeZZZZe 4 FreeBSD 2!!!

On every installation where I tried Run xf86cfg or xf86config, I got an "unknown command" message, that is, if I got that far..... Most of the time, passwords are not written, in pure text mode or not. NEVER NEVER NEVER has "startx" worked after an install and never once has Run xf86cfg or xf86config worked. I nevertheless, have installed FreeBSD on 50 diverse workstations and several servers. On 50% of the hardware, the only way out to continue the install was via the red button. I have seen professors of IT fail to install on compatible hardware. I check all hardware for copmpatibility and functionality before attempting an installation. NO ... it's not me.... it's the friggin installer. I write for Extreme Tech when I am not teaching math and I can assure you, I have installed nearly every distro of Linux in several versions each up to the present date and I have never seen auch a screwed up installation interface as the FreeBSD installer.

Nevertheless, BSD is my desktop environment at work and at home. I DO manage to get it installed, but it is never easy. In fact, it's a pain in the ass.

Re:PleeZZZZe 4 FreeBSD 2!!!

Sounds like you installed it once or twice in your short life, and you got lucky..., thats all. I installed the very first years ago from a tape drive and had less trouble. Admit it. The FreeBeee boyZ just dont have their shit together. I have seen homemade Linux distros that installed better than Free B.

Re:Much needed

You do realise there are 3 distributions of debian, right?

Stable: Released every now and then, no updates except security and the occasional backport.

Unstable: Packages as they are uploaded... updated daily.

Testing: packages that survived in unstable for a certin amount of time without bugs.

If you dont want you're system updated except for critical fixes, use stable, if you want something reasonably stable use testing, if you want something with the newest versions/bugs/packaging problems use unstable.

Re:Whine, groan, moan, repeat.

Hello, people. MS has already done this.

Not even windows is as brainless as the rh installer. You can at least choose _some_ options, and if you need to use an answer file.

Re:Whine, groan, moan, repeat.

"...I would like an install program that is actually powerful. You know, like allowing me to do what I want in the way I see fit, rat