Unfortunate dynamic linking for everything
Matthew Dillon
dillon at apollo.backplane.com
Tue Nov 18 19:08:26 PST 2003
:Many freebsd users (me for one) are still living on a modem,
:where even one bump of 1.5 meg is a significant issue...
:
:Remember that the issue we're talking about is security
:updates, not full system upgrades. "Everyone" would want
:the security updates, even if they're on a slow link.
:
:--
:Garance Alistair Drosehn = gad at gilead.netel.rpi.edu
I really have to disagree with this comment. By your reasoning saving
a few bytes could be argued as being 'significant'. I've done net
installs over slow modems before.. hell, I ran cvsup over a slow modem
for over a year! My problem was never / or /bin. Not once. Not ever.
I really don't care about a measily few megabytes relative to the size
of the whole dist, and I doubt modem users of today care much either
when you put it in that perspective. Sure, if you could save 50% of
the bandwidth over the whole dist it would be significant. But
12 MBytes? No.
The reason your argument make little sense is that there are plenty of
OTHER ways you can make modem user's lives easier that have not
been implemented. We aren't talking about a few measily megabytes here,
we are talking about not making modem users have to wait sitting in front
of their terminal staring at a slow download for hours before they even
know whether their system will boot the dist!
A two-stage install... basic kernel and /, reboot, then install the rest,
would have a major impact on modem users. A thousand times greater impact
then the few measily megabytes. Modem users don't mind waiting as long
as they don't have to sit in front of the terminal while doing so. Once
a basic dist is up and running on a modem user's machine believe me, they
will happily go off and do something else while waiting for the rest of
the bits to download and install because they know if something blows up
they won't have to start all over again.
-Matt
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