Hi
Are the Tumbleweed updates served as delta RPM’s?
No. Updated packages are put in the Tumbleweed repo, where there is no need for an additional update repo, and you update with zypper dup (normally, although you can use other ways if you enjoy a challenge)?
Ok, so every update is going to be a huge full download then? Reason I am asking is because I am on limited bandwidth and considering using Tumbleweed but don’t want to spend all of my bandwidth just updating…
I guessed a download cap was behind your query as per your other thread about weekly download MB. It will be worse if you install multiple desktops for example. I only do KDE on Tw, but haven’t kept stats on MB. The average weekly for me could be under 200 packages downloaded, maybe nearer 100. I will have a look at the zypp history to see if I can improve on that at least.
Thanks consused, really would like to try Tumbleweed. Knowing how much data to plan for would assist me in making the decision a lot.
My previous guess was ok for an average download, but I forgot that there had been more than one download a week. 
I found a much easier method of counting than using the zypp history with all its extra lines of information separating package install entries. Yast Software Management has a brilliant “Package History” with dates, especially clear and easy to read with the plasma 5 presentation. 
So counting for all of April this year: 1364 packages were downloaded here from Tumbleweed (including from Packman multimedia essentials repo). That’s an average of 136 packages per download, over 10 downloads at 2.3 downloads per week.
Earlier this year there was a heavier month, but not counted this way, it will depend on for example how many KDE4 packages received maintenance, and whether libreoffice had a big update. New Tumbleweed started during last Quarter 2014, IIRC.
All you need now is for me to have an average package size in MB for those packages installed on my system. Any ideas how to get it, anyone?
Great, thanks consused. Are the update packages not perhaps kept in a local directory on the machine. If so can you select all packages with a time stamp of April and check the combined size of them.
No luck in finding them locally, and with the frequency of update I wouldn’t expect it as far back as April.
For example on 2 April I updated around 150 packages. Using the “rpm” command with “–last” option, recently I see that only around 40 of those packages remain with that date, where the other 110 have been updated since or removed, i.e. quite a heavy turnover.
You can get some idea of the largest packages that might be excessive in your stuation, e.g. libreoffice, kernel, etc., just in YaST Software (Qt version here) by toggling the size column. However bare in mind that is uncompressed size, and download package sizes can be a lot smaller - see kernel-desktop or firefox on the technical details tab, for example.
I hope it goes well this weekend. 