> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Travis Crump" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> To: "Debian User List" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Sent: Monday, October 18, 2004 15:17
> Subject: Re: How to configure apt to retrieve Packages.bz2?
>
> As for why apt doesn't use Packages.bz2 by default, I think it is
> because bunzip2 is too resource-intensive for low-spec machines.
I've been building my own systems since early 1997, before bzip2 was in
wide use, and I never had a machine which was too low spec to uncompress
something that was compressed with bzip2 -9. For anyone who ever
actually read about bzip2, it onlyneedslike 4-8MB or something, it works
PER BLOCK, it doesn't matter how big the file is. The lowest machine I
had was a 486-100MHz with 16MB RAM. A 386 with like 4MB of RAM, yeah,
definitely. Some 486 systems with < 16 or 32MB, possibly, but more
likely to run out of RAM just handling the Packages data, regardless of
if it was compressed or not.
But it begs the question: at what point do you maintain backwards
compaibility (as the default configuration) for obsolete equipment which
most people are not likely to use? It further begs the question, why
isn't the choice user-configurable during initial installation and setup
or in an obvious way after setup? Why is there no mention of bzip2
support for {Packages,Sources} in any of the example configs, or package
documentation, or package home page, bug reports, FAQs, HOWTOs, mailing
lists? How come no one here seems to know the answer but they spend the
time writing anyways about topics which are neither here nor there?
I often suck more bandwidth downloading Packages.gz than actual binary
updates. It's Debian's bandwidth and data transfer (or their mirrors),
and if they don't care, neither do I, except that it also wastes my time
and MY bandwidth and data transfer. Currently my data transfer is
flat-rate, but I doubt the servers are all flat-rate. They are usually
tiered. I used to work at an ISP, and was aware of what our upstream
providers charged us for bandwidth, and what we charged our clients.
Data transfer can be very expensive. I just want to minimize this, and
there's no excuse for not doing it. If having consideration for other's
bills and a desire to use current technology makes me a jerk, then fine.
:-)
Thank you to everyone who did not respond when they did not know the
answer!
Thank you to everyone who in good faith tried to respond but did not
know the answer!
Thanks most of all to someone who can step off their elitist pedestal
and share their knowledge about something which should be and probablyis
quite simple, and tell me how to do this!
Have a nice day.
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