[ubuntu-uk] Peer to peer apt

[Samuel Toogood]

First post for a while, and I don't usually start threads, but I've been
lurking, and I don't think this has appeared before.

I recently had an idea for improving ubuntu: Wouldn't it be good if packages
could be distributed in a peer to peer manner, as .isos can be? This would
have several advantages, including:
1. If you have more than one ubuntu machine, no need to download everything
multiple times, and no need to maintain an apt-mirror, it all just happens.
2. There are times, such as when a release first comes out, when the
repositories get huge spikes in demand, this would help with that.

The potential downside would be the threat of packages containing malware
being propagated around, but this can be got around by checksumming etc.

Like most of my ideas, it appears someone else got there first. There is a
package in the repositories called apt-p2p which appears to be what I am
talking about. Its homepage is at http://www.camrdale.org/apt-p2p/ . Has
anyone used this? What do people think of the concept? Could it be
integrated into the GUI for managing sources?

Hope that makes sense.

Sam
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-uk/attachments/20100514/464da9c3/attachment.htm