[Mageia-dev] Updating a new install is too long...

Sun Nov 6 08:15:12 CET 2011

2011/11/5 Maarten Vanraes <alien at rmail.be>:
+> Op zaterdag 05 november 2011 16:24:17 schreef Pierre Jarillon:
+> [...]
+>> Then it is too much to be stored in a cheap DVD.
+>> IMO, when the size of a branch reaches such a size, an updated release
+>> should be issued. Remember that a lot of people have a slow link to
+>> internet. Mandriva did such updated releases which all work better than
+>> the original, improving the confidence in the distro.
+>> Today, a woman who has installed Mageia alone and for the first time, said
+>> me that update is so much long that she thought the distro was broken.
+> [...]
+>
+> If we were to use the updates directly when installing (ie: not install first
+> then update, but use updated packages at install time), we could even say,
+> have an "Update CD/DVD", which just contains the packages in question and use
+> that instead of eg: mirrors...
+
+How is a download of a 600MB iso different from installing 600MB of
+updates via net? More, usually you will not need all updates, only
+updates of installed packages.
+
+> This would effectively solve the problem even when not rereleasing mageia. It's
+> true that Mandriva did .0 and .1 but they also had yearly release and not
+> 9months...
+
+The .0 and .1 versions were always releases of their own. It was
+planned at some point in time to keep core packages for 12 months and
+just update userland packages in the .1-release. But that was never
+really carried through. Actually Mandriva did not release any "update
+releases" before 2010 (with exceptions). Until 2010.1 Mandriva had a
+6-months release cycle, 2010.2 was the first real "update release"
+(out of necessity because they could not provide a real release at
+that time of changes).
+
+One visible proof is: the .0 and .1 versions had their own complete,
+while 2010.2 just links to 2010.1 repos.
+
+The exceptions I mentioned above came in 2 cases where the normal
+release had critical bugs (driver for LG dvd drives, beta version of
+x-server). These update-releases did not get a different version, they
+did not use a new repo.
+
+As for update releases in general, I surely would like to see them.
+But I'm totally sure that there is no manpower available for that, not
+before Mageia 2 (all readers are invited to prove me wrong!). But I
+also see the option for local communities to make snapshots and send
+them to people with small bandwidth.
+
+-- 
+wobo
+