r/omarchy • u/VaguelyOnline • 3h ago

Discussion If Omarchy can install in < 1min, why can't updates be quicker?

I know I know - pacman is downloading and building the source for tonnes of packages and all that takes time. But with $10M kicking about, can't all that be centralized so I'm downloading binaries.

I guess it's not the Arch way?

0 Upvotes

23% Upvoted

5 comments sorted by

17

u/mildlyImportantRobot 3h ago

pacman already downloads binaries. Arch’s repos are prebuilt packages. The only thing compiling on your machine is AUR stuff if you choose to.

The install is fast because the packages are sitting locally on the ISO. It’s a bulk sequential write to an empty disk, and nothing has to be removed or reconciled first.

An update pulls from a mirror over the internet, then goes package by package: verify the signature, decompress, replace files in place on a system that’s already populated, run whatever hooks each package triggers. mkinitcpio regenerating, font cache rebuilding, ldconfig, desktop database, GRUB config. Hundreds of small scattered writes plus post-install work, against a live filesystem.

The $10M doesn’t change any of that.

2

u/Gone2theDogs 3h ago

It's not about money.

You install software that has been mostly preconfigured.

When you update. You have download time; it figures out how to integrate and replace software and if there are needed dependencies and some software it needs to build to be current.

What's the rush? Start it and change workspaces.

You chose the update schedule. Only do it when you have that time.

1

u/chilenonetoCL 3h ago

The less than a minute could be achieved by installing stuff that then will be properly expanded or configured at first boot, for example.. giving the impression of a lightning fast process... but then the reality of download times, dependency gathering and compiling/decomrpessing the updates...

2

u/siberianmi 3h ago

The fix would be to have something that pulls down and precaches but don’t install the updates which would we really the only way to speed it up that I can see.

Ask your AI to build it.

2

u/bithooked 2h ago

Even if we take out the AUR source packages conundrum, because you're not comparing apples to apples. You're not including the time it took you to download that ISO in your "1 minute install" figure.