On Tue, 2006-07-11 at 12:00 +1200, Stephen Irons wrote: > Carl Cerecke wrote: > > The trouble is that even a small patch means downloading the whole > > package again. There are no "diff" type updates available. > > > > Cheers, > > Carl. > > > > On 11/07/06, Nick Rout <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > >> Man its kinda annoying to have 100M updates for a six week old distro! > >> Particularly when download of two fail - they don't seem to be on the > >> ubuntu nz server. > >> > >> If I can get the poxy cd writer at the office to go properly I will try > >> and write some cd's of the updates before tonight. > >> > >> Should have brought the laptop in, it makes a good portable drive for > >> this sort of thing! > >> > >> > The problem of huge download for a small patch has always worried me > about binary distributions. With a slow, expensive internet connection > and almost free, reasonably fast and unlimited duration computing, it > seems to me that a Gentoo style source update model might be better > suited for home users. > > 1. Are Gentoo updates (emerges?) really smaller than binary downloads?
It depends. Something like Xorg has huge sources and a relatively small binary footprint. How much is downloaded for an "update" depends too. If it is a security patch and there is no noew upstream version then portage will likely have an amended ebuild which will automatically download the patch file and apply it. OTOH major version changes are generally downloaded afresh, so an upgrade to the kernel may download the whole kernel source even though there will be patches floating around. I don't really have stats nor do I keep real tabs on how much is being downloaded, and how it would compare to a binary distro. > > One thing I like about the Ubuntu model is that they have identified a > small number of applications and services that they support, and provide > regular security for. Their selection matches my needs quite closely, so > all I do is download the security updates once a month. I then do a > feature upgrade every six months (or so) when they release a new version > (this has worked twice: Hoary -> Breezy -> Dapper). > > 2. How would I restrict Gentoo updates to really important things on > specific applications? > > Well it only updates what you have installed, so if you are sticking to that small number of apps that match your needs, gentoo will only update what you have installed. Actually thinking deeper there are 2 aspects - the portage tree should be updated regularly - this is the collection of "ebuilds" - ie installation recipes. This is updated for the whole portage tree at once. It uses rsync to get the files it needs - these are all plain text files and incorporate the ebuild files, signature files, some small patches and config files. But only the stuff you have actually installed is ever updated in terms of downloading source files etc.
