Re: How about using bzip2 as the standard *.deb compression format?
It seems the whole point you are making is that there is nothing old,
slow, lowmem machines can't handle that should be bzip2 compressed, but
my point is that if there is no package that a slow, lomem machine can't
handle, like an X or Emacs source distribution, then the slow, lowmem
machine could handle a demanding decompressor to.
You've got to think about majority rule and what benefits the most users
overall. I brought up the bzip2 thing initially because it was mentioned
that the main Debian distribution will no longer be able to fit on a CD,
and media and shipping costs could be nicely reduced if we could get the
whole thing back onto a single CD again, and also buy more time in
getting the package management system to deal with more than one CD.
Additionally, for users that don't have an ethernet connection to a T1
but like to keep their system up to date with Apt, which I think is the
category most people running Debian on their home box fall into, it's
nice to have much faster downloads. Especially for people with metered
internet access like a lot of ISDN plans.
The point is, anyone with a P5-60 or faster machine gains nothing but
benefit from moving to bzip2, and the poeple stuck with older machines
will still be able to use bzip2 and if their net connection is slow, the
extra time bzip2 takes decompressing may even balance out. I'm sure
people spending a great deal of time on old slow boxes running Debian
are a very small minority, and they can make the small sacrifice of
longer decompression times so that all of the benefits mentioned above
like reduced media and shipping costs, more time to get multi-cd support
for package management, reduced download times, reduced monthly bills
for those with metered access, reduced disk space usage on ftp servers,
reduced load on ftp mirrors, reduced usage of local disk space for those
of us that like to keep a local mirror, etc., etc....
Christopher
James Troup wrote:
>
> Christopher Barry <cbarry@2xtreme.net> writes:
>
> > If your mighty 386/25
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>
> a) cut out the sarcasm, it's uncalled for.
>
> b) get your facts right, it's not a 386, it's a 386/25 equivalent[1]
> as I said already.
>
> > with 4MB can make World the entire X distribution and custom kernels
> > then surely it won't sweat a little bit of bzip2 decompressing...
>
> I didn't say it wouldn't; I was trying to point out what complete
> rubbish "Old/slow/lomem machines can't properly compile X or Mozilla
> anyway." was.
>
> I'm not interested in the bzip2 discussion per se, because it seems
> like your average Debian discussion, with lots of people ra-ra-ing but
> no danger of anyone actually getting down and doing any real work.
>
> > and since you spend a lot less time downloading a bzip2ed *.deb,
>
> That depends entirely on one's network connection. The time saved on
> my network connection for the previous 3 years wouldn't have actually
> been measurable.
>
> > the extra time bzip2 would take by swapping and thrashing the disk
> > should balance out nicely.
>
> IYO and IYE. Mileage does vary.
>
> [1] It's actually a 68030@16 with the mother of all brain dead
> motherboard designs which slows it down by a factor of 2 or so. As
> you can see, I'm not overly proud of the machine, quite the opposite
> in fact.
>
> --
> James
>
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