hi all i am an ubuntu user, now trying my hand with opensuse, why is ubuntu so fast with updating and with loading of packages and opensuse so slow, i have a 4mb line, thank you
What version of openSUSE? What software package manager are you using? openSUSE-10.1 and 10.2 were relatively slow with the Novell provided package manager, but there were 3rd party options with FAST software package management. ie Note there is more than one package manager for openSUSE. I have always used the Smart Package Manager instead, which is FAST. It IS available for openSUSE.
Now openSUSE-11.0 was better (than 10.1, 10.2 and 10.3) , but still relatively slow (compared to Smart).
But I find openSUSE 11.1’s zypper fairly fast.
Are you certain you do NOT have other problems, that you are inappropriately blaiming on the Software Package Mangager? Have you disabled ipv6 ? Have you disabled/un-installed beagle? Either of those could lead you to the wrong conclusion about openSUSE-11.1’s speed for software updates.
> almost certainly
> ‘Disable IPv6 - openSUSE Forums’ (http://tinyurl.com/ckhmrp)
on the topic of updating: all (or almost all) of the openSUSE
repositories are hosted on university servers (for free)…
and, many (most|all?) of those are throttled during some portion of
the day…
i believe (teach me if i’m wrong) that Mark Shuttleworth is a
mult-millionaire who can easily afford fast, non-throttled servers to
send the bits you need very quickly…
you can help: you can donate to the community in lots of ways (not
just money…but a million would buy a pretty fast server near your
house!!) 
welcome, kinda.
–
brassy
thank you for the reply i am using opensuse 11.1 amd64 with 4db ram amd phenom x4, 512 mb nvidia card, i disabled ipv6 and it makes not much of a difference, tried to load vlc, although I added the repository it can’t satisfy all the dependencies, and so on, does living in south africa have to do with it ??
I see the difference in the repository updates as well, primarily with using Yast on the openSUSE side and Synaptic on the Ubuntu side. I haven’t tried Zypper yet but I know Apt-Get in the command line is faster than using Synaptic.
Don’t be watching Ubuntu downloading it’s 30-50 +/- headers and thinking that it’s doing more in a shorter time than openSUSE though.
EDIT: Just to clarify, I see the difference of Ubuntu being faster for updates than openSUSE.
oh and i am use the saix backbone
oh and i am using the saix backbone
i disagree i get things installed 1000x faster with synaptic than with yast or zypper
Maybe it’s just that there are no fast mirrors for openSUSE near you. After Ubuntu originated in SA so one would expect it to be served well in its country of origin.
1000x ? I doubt that.
Its possible your location is a problem (with no repositories easily accessable due to constraints put in place by countries for various IP addresses/filters).
But IMHO its more likely something is misconfigured on your PC’s openSUSE-11.1 setup.
I have observed zypper on openSUSE-11.1 to run faster than synaptic on Fedora 10 (here in Europe).
Please under openSUSE-11.1 provide the output of running:
zypper -lr
Then why would my connection (here in the USA) still work better? I didn’t change to the US mirrors, I’m still using the default.
It may have been stared by a South African, but Canonical and Shuttleworth are currently based out of London, UK.
I have the latest Ub* release - just a sandbox, but whilst it’s quick - it’s certainly no quicker than zypper.
1000x = hyperbole for sure.
How many package managers does openSUSE have? Yast, Zypper and Smart? Any other ones?
What’s the thinking behind all of these? I can understand GUI vs CLI but is that all there is different between them?
Where the business is legally incorporated (Isle of Man I believe) has nothing to do with the location of the mirrors, for which they have a worldwide network. What I had in mind was that Shuttleworth would have some incentive to ensure that SA has good coverage.
But my experience from here (with good network connectivity and many mirrors for both distros) is that there isn’t much difference in download speed.
libzypp is the underlying library that supports both zypper (CLI tool) and YaST (ncurses and GUI tool). The others I believe are third party developed.
Power users like zypper. YaST is good when you want hand-holding. The ncurses interface is functionally equivalent to the GUI one, you just use tab to move between fields instead of the mouse. Handy when you have only remote terminal access.
but i am sure not be the only user in this country
Please under openSUSE-11.1 provide the output of running:
what is it you wish know ?
i did not really mean a 1000x but significantly quicker
I want to see what repositories you have setup, in case you have made a mistake there.
A classic mistake that new users make in openSUSE, is add way too many repositories. Too many repositories can slow down zypper to a pathetic crawl. It can also cause dependency problems, and can cause applications to be installed that are not compatible with each other.
Hence my recommendation is users ONLY setup zypper with 4 repositories set for enable/refresh. Just 4. Those 4 are OSS, Non-OSS, Update and Packman. Only those 4. There is guidance here for those 4: Repositories/11.1 - openSUSE-Community
I did mention only 4 repositories did I not ? 