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I desperately wish Linux distros used this trick too. I am tired of waiting for updates to download and having to clean out some cache folder that apt uses to

I desperately wish Linux distros used this trick too. I am tired of waiting for updates to download and having to clean out some cache folder that apt uses to free space.

arianvanp 5y ago
I think a lot of this work is being doing in projects like rpm-ostree
- m4rtink 5y ago
  Yep ostree is doing delta updates by default. Flatpaks are alo stored as an ostree, so they do as well - even across all runtimes an flatpaks installed on a system! :)
paulfurtado 5y ago
FWIW, RPM based distros can use delta RPMs
Saris 5y ago
That's more an apt thing, dnf can use delta rpms with parallel downloads and automatically cleans unused packages. I'm not sure how well it cleans the cache though. On my fast home connection dnf is way faster than apt to update my laptop unless it's a really small update, then apt is faster because it refreshes the repos quicker. I think there are alternatives to apt that can do parallel downloads and delta as well.
ahartmetz 5y ago
Last time I looked (years ago), Fedora had delta updates - but updates were slow anyway.
IceWreck 5y ago
RPMs have delta updates
secondaryacct 5y ago
But at 50 to 100 MBytes/s on a multi Gb/s line I find it better, it's less the download than the time to install that bother me. Interestingly I found myself using ultra minimal distro vm, and installing nearly nothing on them (qubes os) and just shard the apps: the startup / update of the main gui linux is trivially fast, each vm only has a little subset of apps I care about, and when I trigger a many-vm update they do it in sequence and just update their own subset, meanwhile I can fully use the other vms. Also I tend to use stable-like distros now like debian and barely see updates coming in anymore, compared to my fedora youth when there was several updates a day, some breaking everything.
- craftinator 5y ago
  > Interestingly I found myself using ultra minimal distro vm, and installing nearly nothing on them (qubes os) and just shard the apps Isn't this basically the idea behind snaps? Or is that more docker-like?
xclap10 5y ago
I cannot remember when a Debian update was slower than a Windows update. And that does not even mention Visual Studio updates, which pull Gigabytes of data. Debian updates are very fast.
- Trex_Egg 5y ago
  Nowadays the visual studio updates are quite small for my workload with C++ tools.
- tinus_hn 5y ago
  Detecting and installing a Debian update is much faster. But as they are much bigger whether this is offset by the download time depends on your bandwidth.
cunidev 5y ago
For what it's worth, Solus uses deltas since 2016. Updates tend to be amazingly fast. Shame that everything else in it is slowly going downhill.
bmn__ 5y ago
openSUSE (excluding Tumbleweed) had delta RPMs since 2005.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

I desperately wish Linux distros used this trick too. I am tired of waiting for updates to download and having to clean out some cache folder that apt uses to free space.

arianvanp 5y ago

I think a lot of this work is being doing in projects like rpm-ostree

m4rtink 5y ago
Yep ostree is doing delta updates by default. Flatpaks are alo stored as an ostree, so they do as well - even across all runtimes an flatpaks installed on a system! :)

paulfurtado 5y ago

FWIW, RPM based distros can use delta RPMs

Saris 5y ago

That's more an apt thing, dnf can use delta rpms with parallel downloads and automatically cleans unused packages. I'm not sure how well it cleans the cache though. On my fast home connection dnf is way faster than apt to update my laptop unless it's a really small update, then apt is faster because it refreshes the repos quicker. I think there are alternatives to apt that can do parallel downloads and delta as well.

ahartmetz 5y ago

Last time I looked (years ago), Fedora had delta updates - but updates were slow anyway.

IceWreck 5y ago

RPMs have delta updates

secondaryacct 5y ago

But at 50 to 100 MBytes/s on a multi Gb/s line I find it better, it's less the download than the time to install that bother me. Interestingly I found myself using ultra minimal distro vm, and installing nearly nothing on them (qubes os) and just shard the apps: the startup / update of the main gui linux is trivially fast, each vm only has a little subset of apps I care about, and when I trigger a many-vm update they do it in sequence and just update their own subset, meanwhile I can fully use the other vms. Also I tend to use stable-like distros now like debian and barely see updates coming in anymore, compared to my fedora youth when there was several updates a day, some breaking everything.

craftinator 5y ago
> Interestingly I found myself using ultra minimal distro vm, and installing nearly nothing on them (qubes os) and just shard the apps Isn't this basically the idea behind snaps? Or is that more docker-like?

xclap10 5y ago

I cannot remember when a Debian update was slower than a Windows update. And that does not even mention Visual Studio updates, which pull Gigabytes of data. Debian updates are very fast.

Trex_Egg 5y ago
Nowadays the visual studio updates are quite small for my workload with C++ tools.
tinus_hn 5y ago
Detecting and installing a Debian update is much faster. But as they are much bigger whether this is offset by the download time depends on your bandwidth.

cunidev 5y ago

For what it's worth, Solus uses deltas since 2016. Updates tend to be amazingly fast. Shame that everything else in it is slowly going downhill.

bmn__ 5y ago

openSUSE (excluding Tumbleweed) had delta RPMs since 2005.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]