Never cry about Windows updates being download hogs again

[milomak]

Granted this is Debian Unstable. But it is my main Linux OS and is updated fairly often (generally about every 2 weeks)

877 packages upgraded, 90 newly installed, 34 to remove and 3 not upgraded.
Need to get 2,568 MB of archives. After unpacking 44.7 MB will be freed.

 

[MyWorld]

But it is my main Linux OS and is updated fairly often (generally about every 2 weeks)

That is not frequent, frequent is every day or every other day.

2GB of updates, dang, that must be almost every single app on your desktop being updated!

 

[milomak]

That is not frequent, frequent is every day or every other day.

2GB of updates, dang, that must be almost every single app on your desktop being updated!

it's rather strange i have to say. never seen an update this big on any distro before.

i see your point about frequency. used to update daily though

 

[ponder]

it's rather strange i have to say. never seen an update this big on any distro before.

i see your point about frequency. used to update daily though

Do you have a list of the packages. Maybe a core package was updated to a new version (gcc etc) and all software had to be recompiled against that new version. It happens occasionally.

EDIT: Just had a look and GCC 4.6 was released within the last 2 months so it could be that but I'm not that clued up on this stuff.

 

[DuckieZA]

And here I thought the Mac OS X updates were enormous. And they don't arrive every 2 weeks!

 

[psheldon]

I update Mon Wed Fri evening....... Last night (Friday night) 173 packages of KDE got updated No I don't do Debian...... Gentoo is my vice.

 

[Nuro]

I'm using Fedora full time now, and only recently read about their use of delta rpms. I watched my system updates, and it shrinks your downloads by quite a bit.

 

[HavocXphere]

Has to be something caused by the unstable imo. Some sort of cascading effect I'd guess.

 

[koffiejunkie]

You may have noticed a slowdown in updates in the months leading up to the release of Squeeze. Usually after Testing goes Stable, there is a three to six months period where Unstable and Testing get lost and lots of updates.

 

[milomak]

Do you have a list of the packages. Maybe a core package was updated to a new version (gcc etc) and all software had to be recompiled against that new version. It happens occasionally.

EDIT: Just had a look and GCC 4.6 was released within the last 2 months so it could be that but I'm not that clued up on this stuff.

i think a good chunk of it is kde related

I'm using Fedora full time now, and only recently read about their use of delta rpms. I watched my system updates, and it shrinks your downloads by quite a bit.

delta rpms are fantastic

You may have noticed a slowdown in updates in the months leading up to the release of Squeeze. Usually after Testing goes Stable, there is a three to six months period where Unstable and Testing get lost and lots of updates.

i've been running since just after etch came out and never has there been an update this size. and in any event, the big post hold update happened soon after squeeze was released (which was a tad bigger than 1GB).

 

[Other Pineapple Smurf]

Well I destroyed my Telkom cap last month when I got two Windows 7 Starter laptops, at least with LINUX I could have done it through an apt-cacher (and no, I could not setup a proxy for the Win7 updates as these laptops replace my desktop which was already gone)

 

[milomak]

tbf i've never understood why people used the download thing as some stick to beat microsoft with. it's not MS' fault SA happens to have crap internet for the majority.

 

[koffiejunkie]

(and no, I could not setup a proxy for the Win7 updates as these laptops replace my desktop which was already gone)

Squid runs just fine on Windows and there is even a page on their wiki for it.

tbf i've never understood why people used the download thing as some stick to beat microsoft with. it's not MS' fault SA happens to have crap internet for the majority.

+1

 

[ponder]

Squid runs just fine on Windows and there is even a page on their wiki for it.

Apparently caching akamai (or whatever else it's called) content is not that easy. Then again I could be wrong because I was picking up stompies when I glanced over some websites.

 

[koffiejunkie]

Apparently caching akamai (or whatever else it's called) content is not that easy. Then again I could be wrong because I was picking up stompies when I glanced over some websites.

I have used squid for precisely this for nearly a decade now. The only thing I change from the default is the maximum object size (default is 8MB I think) and the cache size, to make sure it fits. I use this for all my Windows, Mac OS X and Debian updates. All Apple's updates are done through akamai, and that works just fine too.

 

[Other Pineapple Smurf]

tbf i've never understood why people used the download thing as some stick to beat microsoft with. it's not MS' fault SA happens to have crap internet for the majority.

Its the red headed step child, thats why

 

[bubbatentoe]

Most software companies use Akamai to distribute their software & updates across the globe.
Akamai has infrastructure EVERYwhere.
We used them to distribute content from 32 gaming websites hosted in Canada.

b.t.w., Akamai lost their co-founder & CTO during the 911 attacks.
He was on board one of the planes.

Their network supposedly serves 591763 hits per second. (or something like that).

 

[milomak]

Most software companies use Akamai to distribute their software & updates across the globe.
Akamai has infrastructure EVERYwhere.
We used them to distribute content from 32 gaming websites hosted in Canada.

b.t.w., Akamai lost their co-founder & CTO during the 911 attacks.
He was on board one of the planes.

Their network supposedly serves 591763 hits per second. (or something like that).

tbf where the downloads were sourced from was not the issue for me (using uncapped).