-------------- Original message ---------------------- From: Francis Giannaros francisg@gmail.com

So, let's discuss what we can do better for our next distro,

I mentioned some of these on IRC, but I'll mention them here too:

I'd really like to see Zypper become a really mature and efficient (+speedy) app for the command line, and I know a lot of things for Zypper are in the works, so let me mention some of them:

And just wishes, such as:

* Full metalink support, especially for release time, and a metalink client shipped with 10.3. This would include handling our own metalinks, which we can make work with the torrent too. -------------- <snip>

I just thought I would add that aria2 and other clients are working on the partial file checksums which will allow downloads over ftp/http to automatically correct errors during the download, resulting in a simpler process for most users. The groundwork has been laid for KGet in KDE4 as well, and a Firefox plugin is under development too.

As far as handling your own metalinks, that would be great! The project might want to look into Bouncer (http://wiki.osuosl.org/display/Bouncer/Home) which powers Mozilla and OpenOffice.org downloads I believe. It's been patched to support Metalink, but even without that it should be helpful...From some of the features, you can see how well it should integrate with Metalink on the server side.

"Sentry is a multi-threaded Python daemon that queries and tests your mirror network to make sure it is intact. It is responsible for running scheduled tasks (via cron) that can perform a number of tests:

1. Check that mirrors respond 2. Check that files exist on mirrors 3. Check that all files on all mirrors pass their hash code comparison 4. Run full tests on new mirrors and files 5. Spot checks on one randomly selected file on each mirror"

(There will also be a metalink lightning talk at FOSDEM).