Bandwidth Light distro: Any suggestions???

[online14230]

Hi Ladies,


Im sure this question has been asked before. In SA, bandwidth is expensive. So downloading updates for Ubuntu every day tends to rack up quite a bill... Same for almost every distro...

You get the drift. So, ive been looking for a distro that encompasses all: has EVERYTHING pre-installed, has a minimum 1 year release cycle and updates are small. Ive found only 2 that actually come close: PCLinuxOS Full Monty and UltimateLinux. PCLOS uses the rpm packaging model while Ultimate is debian (ubuntu) based. Im currently running PCLOS and the thing is brilliant. I dont need repos (cos it comes with everything) and it just works. Ill be pulling Ultimate tomorrow and will post here re this, but does anyone know of any other distro like this?

help111

 

[koeksGHT]

Puppy Linux?

It's small

What features do you need?

 

[online14230]

Tried Puppy a while back... hell, even before MacPup was around. Nice. However, Im looking for something like what Full Monty does: Once installed, you have access to every possible application already installed, without ever needing to download another rpm. Now, Im looking for a deb based distro that does the same... I think Ive found that in UltimateEdition... this thing looks like its Ubuntu with everything pre-installed...

Ill post updates.

ps: Whatever happened to Impi?

 

[ponder]

You can still use Ubuntu and disable all updates except for security (you can even disable those). Alternatively run Debian Squeeze or Cruncbang (based on Squeeze), once setup there are very little updates and you can always disable the security updates if you want. Debian Stable has about a 2yr release cycle.

 

[MyWorld]

Any distro that has LTS support should be sparse on the updates, and if they update then it should be updates you MUST install for security reasons.

Also look at distros that are not bleeding edge, bleeding edge means that is there is an update it is coming your way very fast.

 

[oldhat]

SuperOS - basically Ubuntu with many extras & drivers. 1.1Gb iso to download.

 

[backstreetboy]

Pinguy OS

 

[Jimmeh]

One option:

If you have ADSL you can get a prepaid local account and set ubuntu to use a local mirror. Then you configure your dsl router with the local account, do the updates and switch back to the normal account when thats done. Takes a few seconds to do and save your international cap/money.

Its pretty useless if you have 3G though.

Another option:

I noticed that Fedora 15 has some yum plugin that only downloads differences. Example: An update after a clean install wanted to download roughly 650MB but in the end it only downloaded about 90MB. Fedora 16 will be released in less than 10 days with an extra bit of awesome.

Slackware or any slack based distro should also be fine. The releases are not done on a fixed schedule and only pushed out when its stable while something like Ubuntu is "bleeding edge" upon release and really benefits from the patches.

EDIT: Updated

 

[DrJohnZoidberg]

One option:

If you have ADSL you can get a prepaid local account and set ubuntu to use a local mirror. Then you configure your dsl router with the local account, do the updates and switch back to the normal account when thats done. Takes a few seconds to do and save your international cap/money.

Its pretty useless if you have 3G though.

Another option:

I noticed that Fedora 15 has some yum plugin that only downloads differences. Example: An update after a clean install wanted to download roughly 650MB but in the end it only downloaded about 90MB. Fedora 16 will be released in less than 10 days with an extra bit of awesome.

Slackware or any slack based distro should also be fine. The releases are not done on a fixed schedule and only pushed out when its stable while something like Ubuntu is "bleeding edge" upon release and really benefits from the patches.

EDIT: Updated

I would have suggested Fedora also, but the OP did specify that a Debian based distro was required. DeltaRPM's ftw!

 

[T3rminator]

I would say Debian, it has a 2 year release cycle between major releases and it comes on 3 DVD's of all you can eat package goodness. It is also easy to use if you have used Ubuntu or any other Debian-based releases. The only updates you would need is security every once in a while.

However, if you don't feel up for this, simply get Ubuntu and disable all updates except security.

How to get 14Gb of files:
You send a university student a PM (someone like me). You paypal them a couple of R's (R50) would be nice. He then downloads the files for free at 10MBps (MegaBYTES per second), writes them on dvd's and sends them to you. PROFFIT!