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

[Wolfgang Bornath]

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