[packagekit] offline updating/installing

[Richard Hughes]

Opyum and APTonCD already have some offline updating/installing
functionality but are very backend specific. I think some functionality
belongs in PackageKit and some does not. Please could you guys comment
on the use cases that we came up with last night? All comments welcome.
Thanks.

Manu
=======================
Manu has two machines - one at work and one at home. The former has a
nice Internet connection, while the other one does not. He is a not a
geek and does not have a media player at home. He wants to install a
media player, which is already installed on his office box that is
located 40km away.

Rakesh
=======================
Rakesh has five machines, which are not on the same LAN. Although all
are connected to the Internet, the bandwidth is not good and it is
costly to download the same updates and packages on all the machines
individually.

Lisa
=======================
Lisa wants to try out Fedora. She does not know about computers, and
finds it difficult to figure out what to install from the long list of
available packages. So, I want to give her a 'package set' on some media
containing the packages I think she wants, so that she can just confirm
the installation of the package set, without thinking about anything
else.

Toby
=======================
Toby does not have a working network adaptor, and needs to get the
drivers installed on his laptop before he can get online. He does have
access to another computer with the same distro on, he selects the
package with the driver, and it gets copied to appropriate medium with
correct dependencies.

Ania
=======================
Ania has just installed fedora. She sits two meters away from Richard
who has a fully up to date system. When she updates her system, she
should use the packages on Richard's system where possible to save
bandwidth.

Brian
=======================
Brian gets fedora from the front cover of a magazine. He has no net
access. 6 months later, the magazine ships a Fedora Core 9 Service Pack
which he inserts in the drive, gets asked if he wants to upgrade, and
voila!

Natalie
=======================
Natalie lives in the UK. She can legally view DVD movies on debian. She
inserts a service pack of restricted codecs which installs them system
wide so that all video playback just works.

Comments?

Richard.