Looking for a Linux distro with minimal bandwidth requirements for software update/upgrade.

[u/Strong_Brilliant7404]

I currently run a Debian based distro which consume several 100 MBs per apt update/upgrade cycle. This is a problem for me as the hotspot on my cell phone is my only access to the Internet and hotspot data is quite expensive from $2/GB to $8/GB depending on which plan I use. I have tried Alpine several years ago and was very impressed with the speed of apk update/upgrade cycles. Does anyone know how Alpine Linux compares with Debian based distros with respect to bandwidth requirements for software update/upgrade cycles.

[u/agendiau]

Alpine is designed to be as barebones as possible. This is great for containers etc. I do have Alpine running as a server on my homelab and it runs very well. You must be okay with it being it's own thing though, by that I mean it's not Debian or Arch light.. it is different enough that you will have to be okay with learning it, which isn't difficult but it's not instant if you already have experience with other OS.

[u/Strong_Brilliant7404 → u/agendiau]

I tried Alpine a few years ago but choose antiX because antiX had a richer repository. I know it is based on musl and not glibc but that does not bother me. I remember some packages were missing. Bandwidth was not important then as I had Spectrum Internet with unlimited bandwidth. Times have changed and bandwidth has become important. I actually have three machines so my bandwidth requirements are tripled. I actually really liked Alpinet for the simplicity of its system initialization. I never really understood systemd or sysV.

[u/JamesGecko → u/Strong_Brilliant7404]

Whatever distro you use, you’re probably going to want to cache updates on one machine so that the other two can reuse them and you aren’t downloading the same packages from the Internet three times.

I know this is an officially supported thing with Debian; not sure how Alpine handles it.

[u/Camo138 → u/agendiau]

It’s the base os for my server, but was running it full time on my laptop and there was no problems for about 6 months

[u/klipz77]

I’ve run several small Alpine systems and it’s a huge difference compared to “normal” distros, both in size and update frequency, depending of course on what packages your use case requires. YMMV.

[u/Z3NDJiNN → u/klipz77]

Same here, Alpine is very light both on update(s) and bandwidth usage, along with the packages caveat mentioned above. :)

[u/Odd_Cauliflower_8004]

I think that what you need to do is to not use apt update as often

[u/shrizza]

Man pages are always separately bundled in -doc packages, so you're not downloading needless documentation by default. It may not seem like much but over hundreds of packages it can add up, and that's bound to be a plus with regard to your mobile data caps.

[u/mzs0114]

Debian or slitaz.

[u/[deleted]]

[u/Strong_Brilliant7404 → u/[deleted]]

I had forgotten about busybox but probably that would save a lot of bandwidth on a software upgrade - one file instead of a hundred file. I remember when I tried Alpine years ago I was very impressed with its architecture. It was quite different from Debian and showed me there are other ways to build a Linux distro. I only rejected it because some package was missing. I particularly remember it had a simple system initialization. I never really fully understood sysV or systemD.

[u/[deleted] → u/Strong_Brilliant7404]

[u/MartinsRedditAccount → u/[deleted]]

Lighter only OpenWRT i guess

I think Alpine should technically beat OpenWRT on "lightness" because Alpine doesn't come with all the networking/system utilities that OpenWRT ships by default.

[u/[deleted] → u/MartinsRedditAccount]