Bug#819664: Suggestions to update the https://www.debian.org/CD/ page
Resending now, actually.
Laura Arjona Reina
https://wiki.debian.org/LauraArjona
-- Original message --
To: debian-mirrors@lists.debian.org
Subject: Suggestions to update the https://www.debian.org/CD/ page
From: Matt Weeks <scriptjunkie@scriptjunkie.us>
Date: Thu, 16 Mar 2017 17:23:05 -0500
Message-id: <[🔎] CANu7QV7hTETPtrkK5jP=VxbNkhjGsXJSB6=VQz0QCw=QCtthGg@mail.gmail.com>
The https://www.debian.org/CD/ page seems a bit outdated. Is there someone here who can update it?
I'd suggest changing
"Due to space and bandwidth constraints, only very few mirrors are able to supply direct HTTP/FTP download links. These sites may use bandwidth throttling, downloads can be quite slow. Please use jigdo or bittorrent instead. DVD images are only available for some architectures and not on all mirrors."
To:
"Many mirrors supply direct HTTP download links you can download with your browser."
And moving it to the top.
It is no longer true that few mirrors can serve HTTP; there’s 182 mirrors serving. The FTP links have been removed. I would also remove the bit about bandwidth throttling. I would be surprised if many of these mirrors still do bandwidth throttling, at least in my unscientific downloads from a few randomly selected mirrors, I don’t seem to notice any very slow downloads.
Broadband penetration has also dramatically increased, statistics in nearly all the countries as I can find show that most users with internet access (that can view this page) will also have broadband. E.g. Pew says 84% of U.S. households own a computer, and 73% of households have broadband. China Daily says Chinese speeds average 9.46 Mb/s. So I do not believe it is appropriate any more to put the best option for dial-up at the top of the page. And while there’s nothing wrong with jigdo or bittorrent, it will probably take the average user more time to download, install, and open jigdo than to simply download the iso from their closest mirror in their browser using the auto mirror selector.
Speaking of that, the automatic mirror selector has been working for over a year now, so perhaps we should drop the “experimental” label and make it the default as well. I do not think it is used for the iso links on https://www.debian.org/distrib/ ? Do we plan to use it there?
Thanks,
Matt
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