I live in India and used to face very low download & update speeds on Tumbleweed. I’m still new to Linux, I’ve been using it for only 2 years. At first install, I got 2,600 odd packages to update. It took 1 hour to download & install all the updates of 2GB. Thoroughly disappointing! I have a broadband Internet with 200 Mbps speed.
Then I went to “mirrors dot opensuse dot org” and manually changed the mirror to Japan in YaST, since the iso download speed for Jp mirrors was the highest. Then I did a fresh install & update to check speeds. Almost all packages updated fast except for kernel-default package which was 165 Mb & it took 30 mins for just this. I then realized that I had changed the mirrors for only Non-OSS & OSS. The Update mirror was unchanged. Then later after changing the update mirrors to Japan, now my zypper updates are quite fast.
Subsequently while I was exploring Opensuse I came across [MirrorCache - openSUSE Wiki] . The mirrorcache links were listed continent wise. I tried the mirrorcache-eu.opensuse.org - European mirrors (EU). In Yast I edited the part of the URLs of OSS, Non-oss & Update repos to “European mirrors (EU)” URL link. Also I chose the https option in the “Yast Sever & Directory” window.
Now my zypper updates are blazing fast, still not as fast as APT while I was using Kubuntu, but Fast Enough. Recently I got a 256 Mb update & zypper did it in under 2 mins. The reason for choosing EU mirror cache although I live in India is because EU has the largest collection of Opensuse Mirrors & are always Up to Date. This is because Opensuse is in Germany. I hope this post helps all those who are new to Opensuse especially beginner Linux Users.
Coming from a Debian based distro (LMDE) myself, this was a pain point in the beginning. Especially considering TW is rolling release and you usually have to update around 2-3k packages every week.
I mean for both normal package updates and distribution updates. As mentioned in my post I have changed the URLs for the repos of OSS, Non-OSS & Updates. I was facing extremely slow download speeds for both kinds of updates.
I mean for both normal package updates and distribution updates. As mentioned in my post I have changed the URLs for the repos of OSS, Non-OSS & Updates. I was facing extremely slow download speeds for both kinds of updates.
The MirrorCache URLs significantly improves download speed of package & distribution updates, especially EU Mirrors, since they are plenty compared to other continents and are always more up to date than other mirrors in my experience. Asian mirrors tend to fluctuate a lot, in both download speeds and the number of mirrors, that are up to date at any given time.
I 'd advice all those new to opensuse, to just stick with EU mirrors and only use the mirrors of their respective continents in mirror-cache, only if they get higher download speeds and if they are reliable enough to get the latest distribution updates.
@pavinjoseph thanks. I’ll surely give it a try, looks very interesting and you seem to be an advanced linux user. This will also be a learning experience for me.
Might be worth a try to see if there’s a difference when using cdn.opensuse.org as opposed to the mirrorcache URLs.
Not really, I consider someone advanced to be able to interface with the C APIs in Linux. I haven’t really started my C journey yet (the book is collecting dust mostly), much less reading up on all the Linux API interfaces.
@pavinjoseph , I did try using CDN Links on a virtual machine on tumbleweed. It’s actually slower than using the mirrorcache URLs. Just today on a fresh install of tumbleweed on a VM I got 356 Mb of updates (distribution updates i.e zypper dup).
Time taken for Retrieving 356 mb :- cdn.opensuse.org = 5 mins 50 secs mirrorcache-eu.opensuse.org = 4 mins
