linuxgeek: Re: [LINUX_Newbies] Presto and Fedora

Friday, October 30, 2009

Re: [LINUX_Newbies] Presto and Fedora

On Fri, Oct 30, 2009 at 06:08:01AM -0000, Arturo Ovalle wrote:

> I installed Fedora 11 to my wife's netbook. In Fedora you have to configure many things, because there are several packages that distro does not include, like audio and video codecs, flash plugins, etc. I found a blog where explains step by step how to configure the system. In that blog, the author recommends to install presto plugin to make downloads faster in about 40%. So I gave it a try. I installed Fedora 11, and then the presto plugin to my wife's netbook and I installed Fedora 11 in my netbook too, but without presto plugin. It is AMAZING how fast it downloads the packages. Updating her system took less that 50% of the time it took to update mine (it only works in command line). Does any of you know how it works, and why other distributions are not using something like that?
>

It saves time for downloading---however, once it's (a delta rpm, which
is what presto uses) is downloaded, the package has to be rebuilt on the
local machine. That is, it's done by comparing the difference between
the file you have installed, and what is available for update, and only
downloads a much smaller file, one that will take care of the
difference.

So, it saves bandwidth--it may or may not save time. (Some people on
Fedora testing list, who have good connections, say they feel it takes
longer to rebuild the package, once it's downloaded, so don't like
presto.)

As to why other distributions don't use something like it--firstly, yum
and rpm tend to be slower than apt and dpkg (the most popular other
method of package management.) Although rpm (in theory, anyway) does
more, which is one possible reason for the relative slown speed, this
means there is less of a need in some other distributions.

Secondly, Fedora's mission statement includes testing new software.
What will usually happen is that they'll use new, relatively untested
things (pulse audio comes to mind.) The large pool of Fedora users
become beta testers, it eventually gets fixed, and then Ubuntu and
others who want to use something stable (they have a different mission
statement) will use it. (Though pulseaudio still causes many people
problems, it's far better and far less loathed, than it was when it was
first introduced.)

Many things that some other distributions do include, such as
proprietary drivers and codecs, are simply illegal for Fedora, a US
based company. Other countries haven't yet let the entertainment
industries completely tell their governments what to do in the way the
US has, and are a bit less concerned about patent rights.

Fedora simply cannot, legally, include many of these things, though most
of them are easy to get if one adds the rpmfusion repo.

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