linuxgeek: Re: [LINUX_Newbies] Presto and Fedora

Friday, October 30, 2009

Re: [LINUX_Newbies] Presto and Fedora

Delta has been discussed on Brainstorm and Launchpad for some time, but they
seem to be getting nowhere in terms of popularity. This is probably because
few people know about it. We tend to be insular and don't pay much attention
to what others are doing. Most of us have enough on our hands just keeping
up with Ubuntu's changes.

It is likely that Canonical developers have there eyes on it because they
make it their business to see what others are up to. Each distro drives the
other which is what keeps Linux vibrant and is unique to us. Windows and
OS/X don't have any competition. Most Windows users don't know that anything
outside of their platform exists let alone what it can do.

Fedora has a history of being bleeding edge. Ubuntu is considered to be
bleeding edge within the Debian community. This may be because Debian moves
at such a slow pace, but the six month release cycle is part of it. The
problem is that many people in the community find this too much and Ubuntu
is more community driven than Fedora.

RPM is a different type of packaging. It has improved over the years, but it
is still not as good as deb, IMO. Also Fedora places barriers that many
users do not want to deal with. Fedora does not make it easy for the
installation of proprietary drivers and codecs. It can be done as the poster
said, but most people who use such things don't want to jump through hoops.
FOSS advocates do not care and prefer to keep Linux pure (without anything
that is proprietary). Herein lies the problem.

When you choose a distro you have to bear in mind what you want and what you
are willing to do to get it. There are two distinct user experiences.
Canonical tries to straddle the fence. They have been criticized by both
sides. One side wants these things pre-installed like Mint and the other
wants none of it like gNewsense. You can't please everybody.

Personally I like Fedora's approach better. Stable is for sissies. ;) I
don't use Fedora due to the lack of available packages. I don't like to
waste my time compiling from source and dealing with dependency issues. Been
there. Done that. I use Ubuntu because it has the fewest limitations, all
things considered. However, I run each new release of Fedora on another
partition. It keeps me centred.

Ubuntu is what it is and Fedora is what it is. I am glad that both exist and
that users have a choice. As for Presto or Delta, this feature or something
similar will become part of the *buntus because as we all know the servers
get taxed with each new release and adding more servers costs money.

Roy

2009/10/30 Scott <scottro@nyc.rr.com>

>
>
> 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.
>
> --
> Scott Robbins
> PGP keyID EB3467D6
> ( 1B48 077D 66F6 9DB0 FDC2 A409 FA54 EB34 67D6 )
> gpg --keyserver pgp.mit.edu --recv-keys EB3467D6
>
> Spike: Should I really trust you?
> Adam: Scout's honor.
> Spike: You were a Boy Scout?
> Adam: Parts of me.
>
>

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