Linux Repositories

I operate several versions of Linux depending upon the application involved. Many advanced applications are ported only to Linux operating systems. Linux is faster, has a smaller footprint and is free. One huge advantage of Linux operating systems that they are virtually free of any viruses or malware normally associated with Microsoft Windows operating systems. If you are concerned about back doors in the OS, compile your Linux version from source code that you have inspected.

I personally operate the following Linux OS:

• openSUSE
• Kubuntu
• Kali Linux
• Fedora
• Raspbian

Keeping the OS up to date is a frequent routine. Every time I boot up a system, there is a check for “updates” and “upgrades”. This is where recent problems arose. It is not a problem with the OS. It is a problem with the location of the repositories. Normally, the system checks for the nearest repository to your location when you first install the system. I just happen to be in Asia, so that means I get automatically routed to Asian repositories on Asian servers. Within this last year, upgrades started taking excessive amounts of time. Upgrades that took 15 minutes before started taking 15 hours or more.

I was forced to go in and hand edit the repository list configuration file on each and every Linux OS version to point to either Oregon State University or UC Berkeley. All of the Asian repositories baud rates went from 100s of MegaBytes per second to 10s of KiloBytes per second. When I tried to upgrade Kali Linux this morning, the clock showed 28 hours for task completion. I killed the process, pointed the repository list configuration to UC Berkeley and was done in 15 minutes.

What causes the throttling of the Asian Linux repositories is unknown to me. I did not have the time to research causes. I just changed to servers that could handle a reasonable baud rate.

If this is not your problem, because you use Microsoft Windows, reflect on what you are doing. Microsoft Windows and any Linux version are not peers by any stretch of the imagination. Linux users often refer to Microsoft Windows as a child’s “sandbox”.

If you are using a Linux operating system and having update and upgrade speed problems, there are many instruction sets on the Internet that will guide you through the configuration file change. It was actually only one line in each of my configuration files on each system, including Raspbian.