On Friday 07 March 2003 05:33, Vincent Meyer, MD wrote: > On Friday 07 March 2003 05:22 am, Paul Dorman wrote: > > Andi Payn wrote: > > >But on the other hand, where does the network come from? If you build a > > > new p2p network from scratch, you need to get people online. > > We're already online! Just a matter of getting things started.
Yes, many Mandrake users have a 24/7 connection (or at least a many-hours-per-day connection) with lots of bandwidth. But that doesn't mean that they'll all be willing to run a p2p server and share that bandwidth. First, there are potential security issues. Second, some people pay for every kilobyte of bandwidth they use--and those who don't still generally want to have all the potential bandwidth they're paying for available whenever they want it. (You could set up a traffic shaper where everything else has priority over the P2P system by default, but that's not exactly trivial.) Third, running a server takes CPU and memory. Fourth, you have one more port to open up on your firewall. Finally, any time you force people to provide resources in exchange for free software, the software is no longer free. So you'd pretty much have to make the default setting, "Don't run the server," then try to convince your users to run it. I'm not saying it would be impossibly hard to do this, but you can't count on automatically having a huge P2P network running just because there's a huge Mandrake user base. There's also the fact that most users don't keep 2GB worth of packages (more, considering that you want to be able to find downgrades on the network) lying around their hard drives--they either keep them on CDs, or they download and immediately delete them (through urpmi/rpmdrake, or manually). If you searched my system, you'd find the six packages that I put together myself, and maybe a few others that are part of the urpmi I'm in the middle of. If you're really lucky, one of the rc2 CDs would be in my drive. I might be willing to host the whole distro for the good of the network (what's 2GB out of the 12 or so drives lying around different systems in my house?), but it certainly isn't anything that I'm already doing--and I think the same is true of most other users. Having a few high-bandwidth major mirror servers on the P2P network would make a huge difference, so the most important step is probably finding sites to host such mirrors. Would stealth.net, mirrors.org, etc. be willing to do this? I guess the only way to find out is to ask them.... Trying to get users to contribute their own bandwidth, storage, and other resources (whether through community spirit, discounts on Club membership, or whatever) could be a long-term goal, but I don't think it'd be enough to get the system started. > MandrakeSoft should provide the top level server, which could then be used > to authenticate packages and such, too. A real P2P network doesn't have a "top level server," but you're on the right track--they can provide a simple webserver that just provides the SHA URIs (in fact, they could be custom-protocol URLs, and Mandrake could configure the web browsers to send that protocol to the P2P upgrade program). > An advantage of this kind of network is that MAYBE a big hard disk isn't > required anymore. I have a dual boot laptop, and the two partitions I have > are both over 95% full. Can only go so big on the drives that will fit in > this machine! With a P2P, could search for the roll-back package, and with > enough users out there probably find it. Except that if you keep fewer packages around because they'll be all over the network, so will everyone else, so those packages actually won't be all over the network.... > > The categorisation thing is a hard problem I think. What relevance is > > there *really* in choosing a KDE workstation or a GNOME workstation? If I use KDE, I want to be able to upgrade all of the "KDE Workstation" packages that I installed in one fell swoop. If the categories have any useful reason to exist in the installer, I don't see why they shouldn't exist in the upgrader. > > >Maybe something like Microsoft's "restore points" in XP, but done right, > > > would be useful as well... > > > ... Unfortunately, I think it would be even harder to get this > > > right under linux than under XP. > > > > But I disagree that it > > would be harder to do it under Linux than under XP. We have openess, > > community, and package management systems! Yes, but they have a monolithic OS that's developed almost by a single team, they have control over what updates are available, and they have the freedom to get it wrong the first time and then spend two years getting it right without going out of business.... Think about it this way: Under XP, you either install SP1, or you don't; under Mandrake, there are an unbounded number of upgrade paths. XP just tracks files replaced in or removed from the C:\Windows hierarchy and changes to the registry. Under linux, you'd probably have to track whole-filesystem diffs for each package install/upgrade. That sounds simple, but try installing three kernel patches, then backing out the first one. > > I'm definitely talking about the future > > here. The future's got to start sometime though, right! Yes, just remember that for many of the most important people, the future can start any time except this week! In other words, keep going over these ideas in your head, and repost them when everyone's ready, and they'll probably get a much better response.
