openSUSE 11.0: Package installation 743% faster for default patterns

We implemented some very interesting features for openSUSE 11.0 to make the installation easier and faster:

• giving it a green face
• making the configuration automatic
• switching from bzip to lzma for rpm payload
• put images of default patterns on the DVDs
• move online update to the desktop applets
• improved package management speed

Yesterday I installed 11.0 Alpha3+ (which is a snapshot of Factory burned on DVD) and it definitely felt fast and easy. So today I decided to give 10.3 another try to measure where exactly we improved or if it's just placebo.

I let the #yast channel know my ongoing times (here only a short excerpt): 10:22 * coolo starts with a 10.3-i386 10:23 < coolo> ok, let's start. 10:29 < coolo> 6 minutes for first stage configuration 10:52 < coolo> finishing basic installation 11:06 < coolo> I'm in the 10.3 KDE online and registered 11:06 < coolo> 43 minutes all in all 11:09 < coolo> ok, on to 11.0 11:16 < coolo> starting from DVD 11:21 < coolo> first stage config done 11:25 < coolo> images deployed 11:33 < coolo> finishing basic installation 11:40 < coolo> I'm online in KDE - 24 minutes

I did not do online updates in either - that would have been incomparable, the registration is missing from 11.0 though, this will only be done in time for beta1. But even if you add another 2 minutes, an improvement from 43 to 26 minutes would be a very good deal to install a full blown system with 2.6 GB.

Sorry that I did not create graphical representations of the individual stages, that will come later - and yes, the title of this blog was fixed before I did the actual testing.