Re: Packaging _still_ wasteful for many large packages

[Steve McIntyre <steve@einval.com>]

Joey Hess writes:
>
>If we do not do something, Debian may be completly unusable for dialup
>users within a few years. I can already only manage to update my
>unstable systems once a week. Is this important? More or less important
>than the number of mirrors we can field?

If you're updating unstable machines over dialup, then the size of the
Packages file is _surely_ not a limiting factor! Things may be
different in the US, but in my experience in the UK most people get
hold of Debian either:

 1. stable on CD/DVD and download security updates. Packages files for
    security.debian.org don't change _that_ often, so there's no
    problem there.

 2. via broadband

I know of nobody here trying to follow testing or unstable via dialup:
it would take too long and cost too much[1]. I really don't consider
that to be so important...

[1] Of course, somebody will now pop out of the woodwork and claim
they do exactly that

-- 
Steve McIntyre, Cambridge, UK.                                steve@einval.com
We don't need no education.
We don't need no thought control.