[CentOS] yum vs up2date

Wed Sep 6 05:34:17 UTC 2006
John Summerfied <debian at herakles.homelinux.org>

Johnny Hughes wrote:
> On Wed, 2006-09-06 at 08:35 +0800, John Summerfied wrote:
> 
>>Which is better? Why?
>>
>>I know yum is the official update mechanism here and in Fedora Core, but 
>>that doesn't make yum better than up2date any more than Windows NT was 
>>better than OS/2.
>>
>>Let's try to keep the discussion objective:-)
>>
>>I'm asking, hoping for some insights into why RH might (apparently) be 
>>moving to yum in preference to up2date (yum is now used within Anaconda).
>>
>>Other than general discussion, I'd also like to know what I'd muss by 
>>using up2date on CentOS.
>>
>>I'll start with this:
>>What has yum  that provides this functionality:
>>up2date -d -u
> 
> 
> The up2date that is used in CentOS is not like the up2date for RHN ...
> it is in fact a bastardized version of old (2.0.x) yum repos.  There are
> backend repos that are not nearly as polished as RHN for yum and repomd
> in up2date.  The up2date for RHN is as good as yum ... however the
> up2date using yum repos is not nearly as good.  For example, obsoletes
> did not work until we fixed it in the 4.4 update.


Where does the up2date in Fedora Core 3 sit in this?

> 
> I am currently working on the yum-plugin-downloadonly to address that
> specific issue.

Does it get source too? That's about third on the list of things I like 
to do.
> 
> Up2date also can not use the mirrorlist option which provides 10 GeoIP
> based mirrors that failover based on (if you install the fastestmirror
> plugin) speed.

I really don't like the mirror list I've seen in Fedora Core. It pulls 
stuff from all over, Europe, Middle East - mostly, it seems, about as 
far away from Western Australia as possible.

I prefer the Debian approach; I choose a mirror. In Australia, IAPs 
commonly have a peering arrangement; content from within the peer 
network isn't charge against download limits. While (AFAIK) all members 
of WAIX (the local peer network) are in WA, not all IAPs in WA are members.
> 
> Up2date does not have protectbase or priorities capability.


> Up2date does not have a GUI capability like yumex.

I've never used yumex, do I can't tell whether up2date's GUI capability 
is like yumex's.

> 
> yum is MUCH better than up2date for CentOS.

As I mentioned elsewhere, installed 4.3 just before 4.4 came out. I'd 
uch rather have downloaded the packages overnight (triggered by cron) 
than type the commands in through my modem line.

GUIs aren't very good through modems.



-- 

Cheers
John

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