Source packages appropriate by default?

[J Fernyhough]

On 20 May 2013 16:09, Daniel J Blueman <daniel at quora.org> wrote:
> When installing Ubuntu, I always see the source packages enabled by default.
>
> For all the general users I install Ubuntu for (including servers),
> it's an utter waste of bandwidth for everyone, particularly when
> automatically checking once a day. This is amplified eg in schools
> without transparent webcaches etc.
>
> Anyone get the same feeling that we should have source packages an opt-in?
>
> Daniel
> --
> Daniel J Blueman
>

In theory, the only time a large download is made for a full release
is the initial repo source update. From then on, only the -updates and
-security package lists should be changing with any frequency, and
their sizes will be much smaller.

With the development release (U+1) having source repos enabled is
perfectly reasonable. People running this are either developers or
have enough understanding to disable their deb-src.

If you are installing Ubuntu and finding this a frustration across
several installations then editing the sources.list after installation
(before the first sources update) might work well. You could even host
a prepared version ready to wget straight to the new system.

J