The following packages...(too many)

[Thufir]

My connection is rather slow and intermittent.

When apt generates a list like:

The following packages will be upgraded:
  app-install-data-partner curl dnsmasq-base finch firefox firefox-3.0 
firefox-3.0-branding 
  firefox-3.0-gnome-support firefox-gnome-support gnome-terminal gnome-
terminal-data kdelibs-data kdelibs4c2a 
  language-pack-en language-pack-gnome-en libc6 libc6-dev libc6-i686 
libcurl3 libcurl3-gnutls libgl1-mesa-dri 
  libgl1-mesa-glx libglu1-mesa libgnutls26 libmono-cairo2.0-cil libmono-
corlib2.0-cil libmono-data-tds2.0-cil 
  libmono-data2.0-cil libmono-getoptions2.0-cil libmono-i18n2.0-cil 
libmono-posix2.0-cil libmono-security2.0-cil 
  libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil libmono-sqlite2.0-cil libmono-system-data2.0-
cil libmono-system-web2.0-cil 
  libmono-system2.0-cil libmono0 libmono2.0-cil libnss3-1d libopenexr6 
libpam-modules libpam-runtime libpam0g 
  libpurple-bin libpurple0 libssl0.9.8 libvorbis0a libvorbisenc2 
libvorbisfile3 linux-generic linux-headers-generic 
  linux-image-generic linux-libc-dev linux-restricted-modules-common 
linux-restricted-modules-generic mesa-utils 
  mono-2.0-gac mono-2.0-runtime mono-common mono-gac mono-jit mono-
runtime openssl pidgin pidgin-data python-gobject 
  tzdata tzdata-java xulrunner-1.9 xulrunner-1.9-gnome-support 
71 packages upgraded, 4 newly installed, 2 to remove and 0 not upgraded.


why can it not iterate through the list, downloading and installing one 
by one, rather than downloading everything at once?  Or, cache all the 
downloads so that if the process is interrupted there's no need to start 
redownloading from the beginning?



thanks,

Thufir