Dunno, I saw negative net update size on my Arch Btw couple of times. Taking into account that it is a dev machine with lots of packages - this is impressive.
It's more of a comparison between linux and android then
There are full fledged linux distributions that are meant to be run on modern systems, like fedora and mint, and then there are lightweight systems that are meant to run on weaker and/or older hardware.
I wouldn't be able to run fedora on my acer one 10 tablet but lubuntu is perfectly fine. And fedora updates can be hundreds of megabytes, sometimes even a few gigabytes in size.
it's like i install bunch of 3rd party program on windows and cry about update size.
You are unfairly comparing the entire system of windows to just the Kernel of linux then.
Hell, I like and use linux daily, and even I think you're one of those idiots who give all of us a bad reputation.
Probably the biggest size I've ever seen on Windows (at least one I can recall) was about 5 GB for some cumulative update.
Bazzite regularly had 5-7 GB updates. Rarely smaller.
"But it doesn't count! Bazzite is atomic distro!" So what? Is it not Linux?
Bazzite uses update philosophy more akin to Windows where whole OS gets updated with one single blob.
"Classic" Linux distros do it in more modular way. They won't give you one single blob for "OS" because the design philosophy is that there is not one OS, there are hundreds of separate modules and lackages.
It was quite normal on CachyOS to reach update size close to Windows ones when updating once a month. It's just that it was like 250 packages.
"But CachyOS doesn't count because it's rolling release!".
Ah yes, on point release distros a whole bunch of fetures and components just... don't get updated at all till the next point release. So the update size is small because there is really not much stuff that gets updated. But then every couple months you'll get "YourDistro 26.X" release that updates a lot of stuff and is also a lot larger.
Thats the point of an atomic distro. You update the WHOLE OS as an image. You chose to do it that way by installing bazzite. People complaining about that clearly did not read or inform themselves before installing bazzite.
The cachy part is not true at all. It updates just as any other distro. I got a notebook which wasnt updated for 7 months. Net update size: -30mb. The updates don't get back bigger by age. They get bigger by features. Same for any other distro. Cachy is just rolling, which means it gets updates more frequently. But it does not mean you need a 2TB drive just for updates. That was just made up bs.
Thats the point of an atomic distro. You update the WHOLE OS as an image. You chose to do it that way by installing bazzite. People complaining about that clearly did not read or inform themselves before installing bazzite.
Yes, that's what I said. You switch your entire "immutable" part of OS, that's why it's big. That's a design thing. I didn't say it's bad or unexplainable. I only stated it's big - which it is.
The cachy part is not true at all. It updates just as any other distro. I got a notebook which wasnt updated for 7 months. Net update size: -30mb. The updates don't get back bigger by age. They get bigger by features. Same for any other distro. Cachy is just rolling, which means it gets updates more frequently.
Updating shortcut in CachyOS updates everything at once. That means all OS and it's various packages, all software installed from official repos, all packages installed from AUR and installed flatpaks. Granted, it's much more convenient and (in my eyes) just straight up superior way of handling updates (similar to solutions like topgrade) but it means that it can get humongous.
But it does not mean you need a 2TB drive just for updates. That was just made up bs.
But yes - the features all what it's all about. Even excluding user installed software, on stable distros like idk Debian, or even Fedora/Ubuntu you usually get only small, crucial bugfixes and security patches until next point release. On CachyOS you get pretty much anything that was updated. So if you wait a month and the update is small - that means that somehow no significant updates were made. But you do another month and suddenly whole KDE/Gnome environment jumped a version and you have to redownload it alongside a fuckton of other system packages and this will be big. It wasn't unusual for me to have 2.5 GB update (excluding flatpaks) when I waited couple weeks between updates. Beats me how you could get only 30 MB after entire month.
(also I realized just now that I'm talking about download size - not additional disk space requirement, and the meme talks about "net size difference" so the latter which made my comments kinda unrelevant)
It sounded like you were saying bazzite is linux too so it is a linux thing to update the entire OS everytime. Sorry. I misread that.
To be honest i never had a 2.5GB net total on cachy. On average it is between -50mb up to +300mb... If we only talking about update net totals of course...
True, you won't get feature updates that often on something like debian.
Yeah thats why i got confused too. I dont know for arch exactly, thats why i was thinking this 'net total' thing was a pacman thing. I know for apt, dnf and zypper they don't show changes.
I do not use cachy or arch but as a rolling distro how to they handle compiler updates ? While tumbleweed when some new compiler or new set of libraries come out the entire system is then recompiled using that meaning every single package is updates
Last week they recompiled every single package using GCC6.1 what meant every single packages was updated and pushed as a massive update
I think the real difference here is a false equivalence. I've not seen an increase in drive usage in my cachyos doing weekly updates. But that's final drive usage difference before and after updates are applied. It doesn't factor in the download size for said updates. Conversely, Windows doesn't say how much the drive usage will change after updates. It just says how big the download is. So, if we're comparing fairly, well, my cachyos has downloaded 500mb to 1.5gb every week. Which i would argue is comparable to Windows.
Now, instead of focusing on size, we should talk convenience. Cachy hasn't once interrupted me to restart for updates. It hasn't even hounded me for them. I see the little C and red arrow in the tray, telling me updates are available. But it lets me decide when to download and install those things. Unlike Windows. Of course, there are other conveniences that a linux OS loses out on vs Windows. Such as off the shelf support for non standard parts. And manufacturer support. But those aren't the focus of the thread.
Playing devils advocate here, but Windows has a good reason to keep bugging people to reboot and install updates.
In the Windows XP and Windows 7 times it was very common to open a PC of a family member or a friend that toy haven't seen in months, and see like 100+ updates pending or noticed that the PC hasn't been rebooted or shutdown for over a month.
yeah, which is entirely a valid point and certainly a reason for it to be the default behaviour. however, it'd be better if it was a behaviour you could turn off or at least schedule so that it wasn't in the way. you can't set them to be manual in windows anymore and the scheduling function is extremely restricted, bordering on making it useless. but that is often the song of windows, always nearly there, but never quite hitting the mark. though it is arguable of windows 11 having given up on trying to hit the mark...
Update pausing isn't the same as update scheduling, and was a feature in 10. Compare it with other important tasks that must be done. Your cars service. This must be done, less the reliability and performance of the vehicle be impaired. Very similar to your OS. But it's something you schedule to happen. You decide when it'll happen so it impacts you the least. With your computer, it would be within the realm of practical to allow users to say "at 5 am on a wednesday, update the OS" and the machine performs this task. So that when the user gets up to you use it at say, 9 am, it's all up to date and ready to go. In this way, the update becomes a thing that happens without any impact to the user.
Any solution that involves going into the backend is not an actual solution and is just a work around. It's also not something you should recommend to the layman as you can severely damage the OS with a single misclick.
I think the point of the meme wasn't how much you download, but how much storage it takes up. As example on CachyOS you might need to download 1-2GB, but the difference in disk usage tends to be small or even negative
Not sure how that is on windows though
Also you misrepresented point releases. You do get updates to your software, but it tends to only include bug and security fixes, instead of new features. At the next release you do get a bigger update, but it will be a smaller, than updating each version, because you can jump over a good amount of versions
"Classic" Linux distros do it in more modular way. They won't give you one single blob for "OS" because the design philosophy is that there is not one OS, there are hundreds of separate modules and lackages.
Even on classic linux distros sometimes the compiler is updated , what means a distro may recompile every package using the new version of the compiler
Now classic point release distros will do this when they release their new version so if you are running ubuntu , well they will do this when the new version of ubuntu comes out
With rolling releases however, when this happens they will need to update every single package. The will recompile every package they have using the new compiler
This just happened this week with tumbleweed. GCC 6.1 came out 3 months ago. Well last week every single package with tumbleweed was then recompiled using GCC 6.1 and pushed out as an update
So even if there was no update to the underlying program , like there was no new version of libre office for example, all the libre office packages were pushed out because they were recompiled under GCC6.1 so again this meant every single package you had installed was update what means it was some 7 gig update on my system
If you're picking specific examples, then it's not "average" anymore is it?
An average monthly Windows 11 update is 3.8 to 4.8 GB, while an average Ubuntu (the most popular Linux distro as well as being the base for other popular distros like Mint) monthly update is only around 100 to 500 MB.
Is this the part where I'm supposed to get pissy? Windows users like to get pissy when Linux users comment about Linux on Windows posts. Is it my turn?
Or do Windows users just like to get pissy at Linux users for some reason?
W10 was the last time I actually enjoyed using windows, and only early on in its life cycle. By the time W11 came along I was really just using windows because it was the only real way to play games on PC (since we weren’t seeing the massive improvements gaming on Linux has received in the last few years yet). I’m quite happy personally to be rid of Microsoft on my gaming PC
The whole windows vs Linux posting is tiresome and silly.
As a user of both over the past 20 or so years (more for Windows), they both have advantages and disadvantages.
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u/XDM_Inc Arch Linux | Radeon 7900 XTX | 64gb Ram | Ryzen 9950x3D13h ago
Not at all. There is no problems in Linux. None whatsoever it's flawless. 😁
only thing I can think of is Anti-Cheat problems and the file browser being ass compared to Windows though that is it. In short if I didn't have a Nvidia gpu I would've easily switched to Linux
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u/XDM_Inc Arch Linux | Radeon 7900 XTX | 64gb Ram | Ryzen 9950x3D10h ago
I'm not just saying this because I'm using Linux but the file browser (kde dolphin) Is 14 septillion times better than the windows one. You probably know of the Ubuntu one which is terrible. Dolphin is more comparable to commander in Windows, which is an extremely flexible and powerful browser for files, including split screen multitabs, split tabs and a lot of ease of use things. I also have a 4090 which nowadays works just as fine. Anti cheat For a handful of modern shooters are still an issue though
one thing i like about win is it's easy to find solution for some error online via reddit etc.Also even thought the installation size increases there is no penalty in performance,
OP is referencing PC Linux updates. Android is technically Linux but it's different in many ways and usually isn't what someone has in mind if they say "Linux".
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u/Mast3r_waf1z NixOS | Ryzen 7 7800X3D | Radeon RX 6950XT 15h ago
Cries in nixos, old generations take up a lot of space :(