Re: Are we losing users to Gentoo?
On Thu, Nov 21, 2002 at 12:15:12PM -0800, Thomas Bushnell, BSG wrote:
> Craig Sanders <cas@taz.net.au> writes:
>
> > i remember a year or so ago when i complained about this worthless
> > practice i said that it would end up consuming hundreds of megabytes
> > - i was told that was ridiculous, it would never happen.
>
> Megabytes! Horrors. You counted up to 96 MB in your computation,
what computation? i provided an example directory listing taken
directly out of my debian mirror.
the approx 310MB came directly from du:
falls:/home/ftp/pub/mirrors/debian/pool/main/k# du -sck kernel-image-*i386
14360 kernel-image-2.2.20-i386
3572 kernel-image-2.2.20-reiserfs-i386
7544 kernel-image-2.2.20-udma100-ext3-i386
14124 kernel-image-2.2.21-i386
14128 kernel-image-2.2.22-i386
85560 kernel-image-2.4.16-i386
76528 kernel-image-2.4.18-i386
96712 kernel-image-2.4.19-i386
312528 total
"*i386" missed one, should have been "*i386*". add another ~20MB for:
19268 kernel-image-2.4.18-i386bf
these figures don't include the alsa-modules or linux-wlan-ng kernel
module packages that have to be compiled for each specific kernel (add
another approx 17MB for those at the moment).
> which I will assume to be correct.
how generous of you. you could have quibbled about every line of the
directory listing i provided, but you restrained yourself - for that
small mercy, i will be forever in your debt.
> Current cost of hard disk is something between $1.00 and $1.50 per
> gigabyte.
it's not just the cost of disk space, it's the cost of bandwidth too -
and recurring bandwidth expenses cost a LOT more than disks (once-off
capital expenditure)
> Branden, could we afford to buy a couple 110 GB disks to hold this
> increase?
can debian afford to buy the same for every mirror too? or pay the
bandwidth costs of about 100MB per debian release of each kernel
version? at an average of 4 or 5 debian releases per kernel-image
package, that's about 400 or 500MB per kernel version.
bandwidth isn't free, nor is it universally cheap. some countries are
still paying up to $0.20 per MB for downloads, or even more.
work out the cost for your location. even in the US where bandwidth is
relatively cheap, it still adds up to real money.
every mirror has this expense, just to provide allegedly "optimised"
kernels for people who are too lazy to compile their own, who probably
wouldn't even notice the "optimisation" anyway.
craig
--
craig sanders <cas@taz.net.au>
Fabricati Diem, PVNC.
-- motto of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch
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