<html><head><style type="text/css"></style></head><body><div style="font-family:bookman old style,new york,times,serif;font-size:12pt">http://osdir.com/ml/ubuntu.devel.kubuntu/2006-05/msg00017.html is erm , something.<br>What about just differentiating between base and revised by files?<br>I mean, there are BASE packages that are included with an ubuntu release, say 9.04.<br>These packages are revised due to bug fixes and so forth.<br>BUT, not all the contents are changed. For these packages, diff from BASE should be possible.<br>Think of the notorious MS service packs: for each revision, all the previous changes are included.<br>But the files that are not changed are not included, since a user is guaranteed to have the original files. <br>A full install of a package would include downloading the base version of that package, and then when updating is required you simply download the latest revision for that package, which includes the updates in all the previous revisions.<br>The advantages include needing to only host BASE and LATEST REVISION, and the user only has to download BASE once : after that, he/she might end up having to download a file almost the same size in the latest revision as a result of a lot of changes , or he/she might not : gnome and it's libraries don't change everything over a single revision , or even 10 revisions. Indeed, I've seen multiple ubuntu releases that looked and behaved almost identically as far as certain libraries were concerned!<br>----------<br>Mark Shuttleworth, I insist your Operating System has at least something of this sort. Not all of your users, especially the ones in third-world countries, have the bandwidth to effectively utilize ubuntu's promise of secure, bug-free and modern software beyond what comes on a disk. And even the ones that do would probably prefer utilyzing it for gaming and so forth. This is especially important for the server market, that , as far as I have seen, carefully spends every kilobyte and hertz that they have.<br>------------<br>kthnxbye , --terlmann <br></div><br> </body></html>