Apt updates back to old style?

[Martijn Hinderdael <martijn@nuonsolarteam.com>]

Dear all,

I've been searching around a bit for where to put this and I ended up
here, I hope it's the right place.

Ever since the updating system switched to "small" files I run into
trouble when updating almost every time. Files fail to download,
sometimes they are corrupt, apt-get update "hangs" on very unclear stuff
like "99% [3 Packages bzip2 0]" for example.

Back in the old days I just went "apt-get update", waited half a minute
or so and I was done. Now it takes several minutes and retries to get
updated package lists, especially on systems that had not been updated
for a few weeks or so and the problem is not in my internet connection.

I can't see if the new system is really "better" from the developers
experience, but from my user experience (I run and maintain about 7
debian machines with stable, testing and unstable) it's certainly not
the case.

I am wondering if there is any work being done on making the apt-get
update process run more smoothly or if there are any plans to go back to
the old single-large-file approach again. If you reply, please reply to
me personnaly too since I'm not subscribed to the mailing list.

Best regards,

Martijn (martijn@nuonsolarteam.com)