On Wed, Sep 15, 2010 at 12:51 AM, Nathan Wayde <disposaboy@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > from the sounds of it all those solutions require an internet connection. my > use-case is about installing on-demand what i want without an internet > connection - the same reason i never clear my cache when i uninstall stuff. > If i'm on the train and working on a presentation or something and i need to > make some graphic i need to know that i will have the apps i need. this has > saved me before where apps i had were inadequate for something that popped > up while i had no internet connection. the fact that i synced everything to > my desktop then copied it onto my laptop meant that i wasn't syncing the > mirror twice. hmm, yeah that seems like a good case i suppose; it is very similar to the use case i had with ubuntu... no possible internet connection, and not knowing ahead of time, at all, what packages would be needed (hardware/etc.). > you do realize the average daily sync in repo is only a few hundred megs > right? and that's mainly because of the large packages which come in > occasionally like kde gnome, OOo, eclipse, etc. yes; once you have defeated "the big download", then it's much lighter... albeit hundreds of megs multiplied out is still a significant number. i'm not against the idea of local mirrors, i just think they are not appropriate for 90+% of users, and should created with discretion. in my ubuntu case, it took _forever_ to download, then i tried to move it to another disk and corrupted the whole damn thing somehow; what a waste. > and i don't see how removing the wiki solves anything, it rather makes it > worse IMHO. it was simply removed with a vague message pointing to a wiki > that doesn't do much better. iirc there was supposedly a warning at the top > of the original wiki and no-one ever read it. this sounds to me like someone > fancies them-self a mind-reader or something. on a more serious note, let's > be honest and say that putting a warning at the top of a page with several > subsections that warns mostly about something further down the page is just > idiotic. i'm really at a loss here; i'm not sure if i ever even saw this page in it's original form. ultimately, i do think the practice should be discouraged, but there is little to gain from trying to obscure it either. > well the ARM is like an archive it's not really a public mirror like the > rest, it's a last resort kinda thing. the idea is that is wants to cache > every package (or as much as possible) that hits the repos, if my script is > gonna cause a problem then I'd very much like to know about it but alas > no-one seems to know what these problems are. while i haven't used the ARM service, i have read (and even written indirectly) about it; it is a great idea. I am actually _all_ about the "everyone has it all" idea, but in the form of a new, next-generation package manager, and a P2P-based distribution platform, where we can all benefit from each other's leechiness :-) at any rate, i don't have anything further to add that's of interest or useful; i trust further arguments will be respected, and a sound compromise can be discovered. C Anthony
