Linux Mint Aims For More Reliable & Faster Repository Access

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Linux Mint Aims For More Reliable & Faster Repository Access

Linux Mint is working on providing "ultra fast" repositories for users obtaining system updates and installing new packages on this popular desktop Linux distribution derived from Ubuntu...

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-Mint-Faster-Repos-Beta

[Paradigm Shifter]

I've never noticed any serious slowdown, but then I'm usually updating when America and Europe are either asleep or preparing to sleep, so perhaps that has something to do with it... nevertheless, it's not a bad idea, I'll see what the fastly mirrors manage on a test system...

[tulioserpio]

Can distros use a torrent-like distribution system?

[Anux]

No problem at daytime in Europe either, but I was limited by my WLAN connection at 11 MB/s (old thinkpad T420).

[MarkG]

There have been times when an update of Firefox or Chromium (on the day the updates are first released) have taken over 20 minutes to download. Occasionally, a kernel update will take a couple minutes to download. But other than that, I have nothing to complain about.

[skeevy420]

tulioserpio

I just happen to be able to see your unapproved post....

While I don't know of any distributions, Sony and Microsoft use Peer2Peer to ship updates to their consoles and games. It could technically be done, but, like that suggestion I had the other day about a distributed computing package building, it likely wouldn't be reliable unless there was some sort of Contracted Agreement between the Volunteers and the Distribution in regards to uptime and availability.

Unlike game consoles with 100s of millions of users worldwide, there are 100s of thousands Linux users and only 10s of thousands use a specific distribution. They'd need a lot of Volunteers to ensure that it'd be fast and reliable unlike consoles with 10x the users that force everyone to participate.

Ironically, Sony and their P2P updates is the slowest thing in my house in regards to download speeds. The PlayStation Network is a lesson in why you shouldn't use Peer2Peer. Even with their millions and millions of Forced Volunteers, it isn't what I consider to be a fast service.

[peterdk]

On a side note: On Ubuntu the PPA's seem quite limited in bandwidth. Firefox takes me 40s download time or so. While the rest takes seconds.

[varikonniemi]

How necessary is Mint if they need to host their repository themselves? Distros like Manjaro have mirrors in every part of the world, hosted by supporters for free.

And it's not a question of quality of service, every mirror i have tried serve at the maximum my current internet can handle, 30MiB/s

[anda_skoa]

Sony and Microsoft use Peer2Peer to ship updates to their consoles and games.

Way back when I was still playing World of Warcraft, the Blizzard updater used both direct download and P2P.

P2P would probably yield the best speed-up when multiple machines on the same local network need the same updates.
Then again such setups often have a local cache like apt-proxy.

[Anux]

How necessary is Mint if they need to host their repository themselves?

What do you mean with necessary?

Distros like Manjaro have mirrors in every part of the world, hosted by supporters for free.

As does Mint, the problem seems to be that too many select the main server.

The easy solution would be to have an auto select mechanism in the updater, that selects the best server currently available to the individual user or even better spread the downloads to multiple servers.

Edit: I just checked, if you select another mirror it does automatically check the bandwidth of all available servers and you can (manually) select the fastest one.