Bug 797366 - yum needs to go
Summary: yum needs to go
Keywords:
Status: CLOSED NOTABUG
Alias: None
Product: Fedora
Classification: Fedora
Component: yum
Version: 16
Hardware: All
OS: Linux
unspecified
high
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: Dan Mashal
QA Contact: Fedora Extras Quality Assurance
URL:
Whiteboard:
Depends On:
Blocks:
TreeView+ depends on / blocked
 
Reported: 2012-02-25 07:14 UTC by Elison Niven
Modified: 2014-01-21 23:21 UTC (History)
9 users (show)

Fixed In Version:
Doc Type: Bug Fix
Doc Text:
Clone Of:
Environment:
Fedora Desktop
Last Closed: 2012-04-15 20:40:47 UTC
Type: ---
Embargoed:


Attachments (Terms of Use)

Description Elison Niven 2012-02-25 07:14:59 UTC
Description of problem:

Fedora is a feature rich Linux distribution containing the latest advancements in open source software.

Why does Fedora still decide to use yum? The package management system of Fedora is still very primitive.

Here are my reasons why yum needs to go or need *major* changes:

1) yum's interface is non-interactive. I always fail to understand why it is taking so long. "Setting up update process" stays for more than 1 minute at times! (On a fairly fast PC with high speed internet connection). Atleast it should show the user some progress as to what it is doing.

2) Quitting by CTRL-C isn't very easy. Is it?

3) On 64-bit machines, there *always* come up some issues with i686 packages and protected multilib versions.

4) I have used Fedora for more than 5 years, I have faced "Unable to retreive repository information repomd.xml" for like infinite times. Yes, the error eventually gets resolved but why do I face it all the time?

5) Need for autocomplete to work properly in package name argument of command line when pressing TAB. It is painfully slow.

6) yum requires to download repository information for each user.

7) yum is strangely clubbed with package-cleanup and I don't know what else.

These are my ramblings about yum. I know I could have filed a few of the above as bugs and may be help to resolve them, But someone really needs to address the bigger issue that is yum's design philosophy rather than just solve bugs in yum.

Rather than providing me workarounds or solutions to make it work better, Fedora needs to recognise that yum is really a huge pain to work with.

I will share one experience I had. Yesterday I did yum --enable-repo=updates update on Fedora 16. It gave me an error stating protected multi-lib versions of a dozen or so packages. I don't how I got those packages installed. I always use yum install package-name to install the packages and install *only* from Fedora repos. Running package-cleanup --clean-dupes removed 691 packages leaving my system crippled. It removed the entire KDE and also network manager. Now I unable to login to GNOME shell and not able to connect to any network. I had to take backup using recovery mode before proceeding to reinstall.

I now need to reinstall my operating system. Reason : yum screwed up.

Comment 1 yagnesh 2012-02-25 19:56:14 UTC
I agree to almost all the points... Package manager needs to have a lot in terms of feature & stability. I have used yum & apt-get for long time. I would certainly rate apt-get more. Yum is not that much yummy! 

One more poor thing is its front-end gui. Let us not talk about user friendliness, it's a far thing for it. It is not usable even. Why it is not changed yet or even thought to be, I don't see it in road-map. Look at ubuntu/suse software managers, they are way better. I think fedora should consider revamping it and making it more useful and powerful. Also they should provide web based interface for managing packages. I really like the suse studio idea. Installation/removal/up-gradation of package is one of the most frequently used feature by any user. The current method really bugs any normal user. Why we become handicapped without the terminal. I helped many people install fedora, and as I know they (normal peoples) can't survive using it alone by themselves. They stuck at doing many simple thing they used to do in windows/mac regularly. 

Following is the list of complaints I've heard most from normal users,

- Docx: if this is not supported properly then why we are allowing this files to get opened and written in open office. In the end people end up in making a document that is of no use (Issues in table conversions etc), that is really painful when you have spent whole night preparing the document in your well-wisher friend's suggested awesome OS, and next day presenting in the office in one of the most dumb OS. In the end they love their old dumb one more..

- Skype: Oh man what to say. Having skype in fedora used to be a luxury for an average user. I think it's now not that painful. 

- Slow: Fedora 15/16 performance is not too good. At least not up to the mark of and ideal Linux Distro image we have in mind. 

- Booting up to login screen & then after is slow. And why I need to wait for application list to get populated when in activities view for the 1st time? 

- FC16 doesn't shutdown. I have to make her sleep like little baby, waiting for her eyes to close then close its lid, before I go to the bed. It's pathetic man, not tested well or what? 

- Codecs: Yeah it's way easy, but not for any average user. Why proper option/suggestion to install all non free codec is provided to user if he/she wishes so (same as provided for any single codec). May be there should be an checklist of packages that normal computer user, not an open source admirer, would require. When booted first time it should ask user to get all non free and required other packages which are commonly used & essential. 

- Adding/removing repositories is not user friendly. There should be any single click mechanism for that. 

- Touchpad doesn't work so smooth as it does in windows. It takes a quite lot time to recognize touch event, not configurable. And by default mouse clicks from touchpad are disabled, I don't understand why? Is it Because it's not fully supported? 

- Last but not least, the most horrible thing ever, nautilus. It needs a lot much improvements feature wise & performance wise. We are making it more slower by adding more advanced features. 

I appreciate recent gnome efforts on gnome-shell plugins & its web based easy installation. 

I think we are not innovating in other things then user interface nowadays which is done by gnome btw. In my point things like usability & easiness (not only for desktop, but for diff utilities & apps people use regulary), essentials/favorites/common practices/preferences, ready to use distros, terminal free, manageability should be considered in further goals. 

We should try this, prepare a distro with no terminal at all and then test it & add missing features. I think this shall be done on more priority then other things in order to completely uproot the old legacy the we enjoy the most and aliens hate the most. 

Let us hope for the best.

Comment 2 Christian Kujau 2012-04-11 07:28:35 UTC
#657420 seems to cover yum's performance issues. All other issues/ramblings stated above should be filed separately and with error messages and logfiles attached, IMHO.

Comment 3 Dan Mashal 2012-04-15 20:40:47 UTC
Honestly, this is a rant more than anything. 

Going forward I agree, there are ways to improve yum performance and I will propose a new bug on how this can be done.

For example insalling yum-plugin-fastestmirror by default and giving yum and its backend processes a higher priority.

Your bug report of "yum needs to go" is not a bug, and yum is not going anywhere. 

Sorry.

Comment 4 Christian Kujau 2012-04-18 23:23:09 UTC
For the record: it's not a "slow" mirror that slows yum down, it's its local operations. Installing yet another plugin will make yum only slower. But I agree with "CLOSED NOTABUG".

Comment 5 Dan Mashal 2012-04-19 04:37:59 UTC
Not true. Yum fastestmirror helps me immensely without download speeds.

As far as yum itself after the downloads, I will renice yum and pids 1-20 to -20 along with some other processes that I notice using CPU and Memory during a yum update. Doing these 2 things in combination definitely makes a noticeable difference.

Will fastestmirror work for everyone? No. But it works great for me.

Comment 6 Christian Kujau 2012-07-27 21:25:13 UTC
For the record, and since I now have a Fedora system on my hands that I use more often, I can tell that "fastestmirror" does not really help and yum is still slower.

$ time yum info info 
Loaded plugins: changelog, fastestmirror, langpacks, presto
[...]
real    0m10.094s
user    0m6.111s
sys     0m0.903s

vs.

$ time apt-cache show info 
[...]
real    0m0.051s
user    0m0.008s
sys     0m0.016s

$ time pkginfo -l SUNWzsh
real    0m1.166s
user    0m0.823s
sys     0m0.235s

I mean, one gets used to it, sure. But it's still slower compared to other package managers.

Comment 7 Dan Mashal 2012-07-27 23:44:00 UTC
Please open a new bug against yum if it is a real problem. This is NOT the bug to discuss this in.

Comment 8 Dan Mashal 2012-07-27 23:45:14 UTC
And yum is NOT going, anywhere. ;)

Comment 9 Zdeněk Pavlas 2012-08-01 07:36:08 UTC
> $ time yum info info
> real    0m10.094s

This usually takes less than 1s (unless metadata have expired and Yum has checked online for an update, or you were low on memory and the system swapped)..  about 800-900ms on my system with 30k available packages in 7 repositories.  Still not optimal, but most of it is opening the repository databases- a fixed overhead we can't do much with.

$ yum info info -v|grep time
Config time: 0.030
rpmdb time: 0.000
pkgsack time: 0.634

If it's repeatable, please include details and fill a bug.

Comment 10 Christian Kujau 2012-08-02 06:35:40 UTC
@Zdeněk: It usually takes 10s here and no, metadata has not expired, I repeated the command several times so it should not check online. Wasn't low on memory either. There's bug 657420 (and maybe others) about slow yum operation.

@Dan: of course, yum won't go anywhere (no pun intended). And that was not my point. This bug is closed anyway and rightly so.


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