So, we're up to 180MB in updates.

[Kent Borg]

On Fri, Jul 14, 2006 at 04:25:50PM +0700, Chanchao wrote:
> ' Had to change over to a new laptop... Always love installing Ubuntu..
> 
> Turns out though that, starting from a new CD, we're up to 180MB of
> updates right after installation.

[Warning, some philosophy here...]

Think about it.  In all that, how many actual bits fundamentally
changed?  Let's imagine a lot of programming happened on some package
(something that really isn't supposed to occur in released Dapper),
how many could that be?  Maybe some graphics changed.  Still, it seems
to me that the download has got to be well over 100-to-1 its inherent
size.

I understand that a one-bit security fix can cause a recompile of,
say, Openoffice.  And the result of doing a gigantic download because
of one bit changing is terribly crude.  Think about it.  If we ran
cities this way a single mis-installed oneway sign and we would have
to rebuild NYC.  Or, maybe just rebuild Manhattan.  Or, maybe just
rebuild one block of Manhattan.  Good thing in a real city we can
usually just slap up the right sign.


Once in an earlier life, many years ago, I was working on software
that controlled an electron microscope, and someplace I had a 2 that
should have been a 3 (I think it was).  That's one-bit.  It took well
over an hour to make the change.  I went back to my office to made the
edit.  I had to recompile that file.  I had to relink.  I had to
convert it to the right download format.  I had copy to a floppy.  I
had sneakernet the floppy to the microscope.  Computers were slower
then, that's why it took an hour, but the fundamental architecture is
still the same, all the same steps are still needed.  Where is the
innovation?  (Didn't computers used to be about innovation?  Yet so
tradition-bound...)


Ubuntu wants to be the OS for everyone, including people who don't
have buckets of cheap bandwidth.  Maybe this issue should be penciled
in for some release down the road.  It would be radical...


-kb, the Kent who likes an occasional radical idea.