Debian Linux is one of the most-installed Linux distributions, and Progeny is essentially a commercially supported branch of the Debian distribution. Progeny has been in beta testing since its first release in November 2000. Traditionally, students and hackers have been Debian's primary audience, largely because of the package installation and update tools that make it easy to install, remove, and configure Debian's 5,000 software titles. But Debian has been slow to catch on in the enterprise space for several reasons. Worst of all, its several current versions are often too cutting-edge for production use.
Progeny hopes to change all that.
Installation Progeny's installer isn't perfect, but it gives Red Hat's a run for its money, offering both text and graphical modes. The installer works equally well when booted from a floppy or a CD, and it supports network installations. We were pleased that Progeny's installer defaulted to the GRUB boot loader rather than the time-honored LILO . Since LILO has no knowledge of file systems, it must use physical disk sector positions to determine the proper Linux boot sector. This can be a problem with larger drives with capacities that usually extend beyond the range a system's BIOS can detect.