February 2005
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I am The Cyberwolfe and these are my ramblings. All original content is protected under a Creative Commons license - always ask first.
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Speed

In this modern world, there are still some things that you simply have to wait for, regardless of how much technology you throw at them.

Comcast recently upped my download speeds to a whopping 4 Megabits per second. I have a relatively high-speed processor, hard drive, and half a gig of RAM. This, however, all means nothing when the server you are downloading from lets you top out at 25 Kilobits per second. What does all that mean? It means it took me a full 24 hours to download the latest release from SuSE Linux.

Of course, it was a 3 Gigabyte DVD ISO image.

With those speeds, however, one wonders if the other method for the free version of their distro has ever actually worked for anyone. They offer the option of an FTP install, where you download just the installation program and do the rest on-line, only downloading what you need, instead of getting the whole shebang like I did. Call me crazy, but I’m not too keen on spending the next 6 hours waiting to complete an install, when a dropped connection could possibly mean having to wait and start again from scratch. Ewww.

So, I will now attempt to dual-boot the laptop here with SuSE. Cross your fingers…
———————-
Well, fuckity. Apparently, I grabbed the wrong file or it downloaded incorrectly, because the package list isn’t there. I suppose I’ll try again.

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 20th, 2005 at 12:31 am and is filed under Geekery. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

2 replies to “Speed”

  1. GreyDuck Says:
    February 20th, 2005 at 9:48 am

    Say what you will about over-the-wire bootstrapped installs, but so far my experiences with the (new, beta) Debian Installer have been nothing but positive. If you have a solid connection and a good list of mirrors to choose from, it’s not a bad way to go. Think of all the packages you’re /not/ downloading out of that 3 gigs, when you do the over-the-wire install.

    That said… hasn’t Novell heard of BitTorrent yet? Sheesh. It shouldn’t have been quite so painful…

  2. Da Wolfie Says:
    February 20th, 2005 at 9:53 am

    I hunted down all the mirrors last night, and they all have the same file. I think Novell switched it out to an FTP install only, and hasn’t bothered to update the server README’s.

    The GPL says they have to offer a free download, but they don’t have to make it easy.