Requirements

• Know how to install packages using the PackageKit utility

What are Delta RPMs?

Delta RPMs (DRPMs) are a very new way to upgrade packages on your Fedora Linux system. Unlike regular RPM packages, which contain all files required to install a package, DRPMs contain only the changes between two package versions. This allows you to do full updates in a much shorter time. For example, instead of downloading a full 10MB for an update where only 500kb of content changed, a DRPM package will only hold the 500kb of data which changed.

The Prestro project bridges the gap between DRMS and the Fedora package manager, yum. Although Fedora 11 has full support for deltarpms, the presto plugin is not enabled by default. Enabling it is simple and easy:

Enabling Delta RPM updates

Enabling delta RPM updates in Fedora 11 is remarkably simple - just open PackageKit and install the yum-presto package. That's it - you should notice right away that software updates are considerably quicker to download and install.

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