We have to set realistic expectations here. There seems to be some reluctance within Redhat to upgrade the current update mechanism. I doubt we will get any of their programmers working on it. So whatever is likely to work must be do-able by one or two people in a few months. That, IMHO, means working with the RPM system. RPMs have been part of Redhat since the beginning (it can be argued that it's what put Redhat on the Linux map in the first place). I firmly believe that a repository of deltas that can be applied to the existing RPMs to produce update RPMs in addition to the usual download the whole RPM approach can yield a speed increase of x 4 or better for those on narrow band links. Keeping a GB or two of RPMs on disk to enable this to happen is, I believe, a very small price to pay -- especially if the user can choose if they want to or not. I disagree that Windows does not require you to keep your OS distribution on disk. I believe most machines sold with XP come with complete re-install kits, often kept in a hidden partition. Joe. On Wed, 16 Mar 2005 08:38:44 -0500, Paul A. Houle <ph18@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > On Tue, 15 Mar 2005 21:21:57 -0500, Chuck R. Anderson <cra@xxxxxxx> wrote: > We really have to think about the ease of use standards set by the > competition. I recently had to buy a Mac mini for some consulting work, > and really, Mac OS X makes any Linux distribution look bad. > > I doubt either Windows Update or the equivalent under Mac OS X has a > granularity as coarse as rpms. Neither of those requires that you keep > your OS disk around or burns up 4G on your disk with packages. >
