On Friday 20 May 2005 20:50, THUFIR HAWAT wrote: > On 5/20/05, Jerry Gaiser <jerryg@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > On Friday 20 May 2005 13:02, THUFIR HAWAT wrote: > > > On 5/20/05, Jerry Gaiser <jerryg@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > > ... > > > > > > > Broadband penetration in the US and especially the Western US is > > > > > *much* smaller than those of you in the big cities imagine. > > > > > > I don't like the way this creates a quasi-"internet" class structure. > > > globally, bandwith is, I believe, a scarce resource. however, if yum > > > (or foo, whatever) used compressed binaries wouldn't it be, at worst, > > > a wash? provided you're doing the download and install yourself. > > > > Ah yes.. But there's the rub. The files are already compressed, though > > probably not optimally. There is also an alternative. Having only a slow dial-up connection, I generally don't download binaries. Sources are usually much smaller, and since such a low bandwidth forces me not to update anything unless absolutely necessary, compiling from source isn't so bad as generally regarded, from a maintenece point of view. As for the number of CDs in the base distribution, I have them downloaded and burned by my friend abroad and mailed to me (and I guess I'm not the only one getting Fedora in a second-hand way). So in such environment it is very, very usefull to have as many apps as possible on the CDs. I guess the part of Fedora community that has too low bandwidth to use repositories is not insignificant. Besides, for those of you who have 10Mbps connections or so, there should be no difference in downloading one distribution CD versus four of five of them. So why would you want to lower the number of CDs? For eastetical reasons, maybe? There are people out there that actually do need everything (or most things) on those four CDs. A couple of friends of mine have a habbit of switching from Gnome to KDE and back on a daily basis (don't ask me why...), and want both DEs installed and ready to use... Just some thoughts... :-)) Best regards, Marko
