Re: CPU specific binaries

[Colin Walters <levanti@verbum.org>]

On Wed, Oct 20, 1999 at 02:34:43PM +1000, Glenn McGrath wrote:
> Archive bloat.... i thought debian was about giving the user the choice of
> what they wanted rather them presenting them with subset of whats available.
> I feel silly even sugesting this, but why not have official binaries for
> other cpu's, its the only way they would get widespread use.
> Possible reasons
> 1) Archive bloat
> Storage is cheap ($22 per GB where  i am), mirrors should be able to handle
> this, thats what there all about.
> CD's are cheap, a coupla dollars
> 
> 2) Bandwidth of mirrors
> Mirrors could JUST mirror the 386 packages if they didnt consider others
> worthy, its there choice

You are missing the point.  The 48MB coastline data file is just the beginning,
if we continue to allow packges of unlimited size and limited general utility.
What happens when I decide to upload a package of 10 2-hour long Linux training
videos I made in MPEG format?  Well, everyone has to buy another disk.  Are
you volunteering, becuase disk space is _so_ cheap? 

Again, the problem isn't how little disk space we have.  The problem is the
increasingly low utility/size ratio of many packages.

-- 
Colin Walters <levanti@verbum.org>
http://web.verbum.org/levanti
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