Table of contents
I measured how long the most popular Linux distribution’s package manager take
to install small and large packages (the
ack(1p) source code search Perl script
and qemu, respectively).
Where required, my measurements include metadata updates such as transferring an up-to-date package list. For me, requiring a metadata update is the more common case, particularly on live systems or within Docker containers.
All measurements were taken on an Intel(R) Core(TM) i9-9900K CPU @ 3.60GHz
running Docker 20.10.8 on Linux 5.13.10, backed by a Corsair Force MP600 NVMe
drive boasting many hundreds of MB/s write performance. The machine is located
in Zürich and connected to the Internet with a 1 Gigabit fiber connection, so
the expected top download speed is ≈115 MB/s.
See Appendix D for details on the measurement method and command outputs.
Measurements
Keep in mind that these are one-time measurements. They should be indicative of actual performance, but your experience may vary.
ack (small Perl program)
| distribution | package manager | data | wall-clock time | rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fedora | dnf | 84 MB | 25s | 3.4 MB/s |
| NixOS | Nix | 15 MB | 7s | 2.3 MB/s |
| Debian | apt | 16 MB | 3s | 4.9 MB/s |
| Arch Linux | pacman | 25 MB | 1s | 18.4 MB/s |
| Alpine | apk | 10 MB | 1s | 11.9 MB/s |
qemu (large C program)
| distribution | package manager | data | wall-clock time | rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fedora | dnf | 350 MB | 56s | 6.25 MB/s |
| Debian | apt | 256 MB | 39s | 6.5 MB/s |
| NixOS | Nix | 251 MB | 36s | 6.8 MB/s |
| Arch Linux | pacman | 128 MB | 10s | 12.1 MB/s |
| Alpine | apk | 34 MB | 1.8s | 18.6 MB/s |
(Looking for older measurements? See Appendix B (2019) or Appendix C (2020)).
The difference between the slowest and fastest package managers is 30x!
How can Alpine’s apk and Arch Linux’s pacman be an order of magnitude faster than the rest? They are doing a lot less than the others, and more efficiently, too.
Pain point: too much metadata
For example, Fedora transfers a lot more data than others because its main
package list is 60 MB (compressed!) alone. Compare that with Alpine’s 734 KB
APKINDEX.tar.gz.
Of course the extra metadata which Fedora provides helps some use case, otherwise they hopefully would have removed it altogether. The amount of metadata seems excessive for the use case of installing a single package, which I consider the main use-case of an interactive package manager.
I expect any modern Linux distribution to only transfer absolutely required data to complete my task.
Pain point: no concurrency
Because they need to sequence executing arbitrary package maintainer-provided code (hooks and triggers), all tested package managers need to install packages sequentially (one after the other) instead of concurrently (all at the same time).
In my blog post “Can we do without hooks and triggers?”, I outline that hooks and triggers are not strictly necessary to build a working Linux distribution.
Thought experiment: further speed-ups
Strictly speaking, the only required feature of a package manager is to make available the package contents so that the package can be used: a program can be started, a kernel module can be loaded, etc.
By only implementing what’s needed for this feature, and nothing more, a package
manager could likely beat apk’s performance. It could, for example:
- skip archive extraction by mounting file system images (like AppImage or snappy)
- use compression which is light on CPU, as networks are fast (like
apk) - skip fsync when it is safe to do so, i.e.:
- package installations don’t modify system state
- atomic package installation (e.g. an append-only package store)
- automatically clean up the package store after crashes
Current landscape
Here’s a table outlining how the various package managers listed on Wikipedia’s list of software package management systems fare:
| name | scope | package file format | hooks/triggers |
|---|---|---|---|
| AppImage | apps | image: ISO9660, SquashFS | no |
| snappy | apps | image: SquashFS | yes: hooks |
| FlatPak | apps | archive: OSTree | no |
| 0install | apps | archive: tar.bz2 | no |
| nix, guix | distro | archive: nar.{bz2,xz} | activation script |
| dpkg | distro | archive: tar.{gz,xz,bz2} in ar(1) | yes |
| rpm | distro | archive: cpio.{bz2,lz,xz} | scriptlets |
| pacman | distro | archive: tar.xz | install |
| slackware | distro | archive: tar.{gz,xz} | yes: doinst.sh |
| apk | distro | archive: tar.gz | yes: .post-install |
| Entropy | distro | archive: tar.bz2 | yes |
| ipkg, opkg | distro | archive: tar{,.gz} | yes |
Conclusion
As per the current landscape, there is no distribution-scoped package manager which uses images and leaves out hooks and triggers, not even in smaller Linux distributions.
I think that space is really interesting, as it uses a minimal design to achieve significant real-world speed-ups.
I have explored this idea in much more detail, and am happy to talk more about it in my post distri: a Linux distribution to research fast package management.
Appendix A: related work
There are a couple of recent developments going into the same direction:
- “Revisiting How We Put Together Linux Systems” describes mounting app bundles
- Android Q uses ext4 loopback images
- The Haiku Operating System’s package manager Haiku Depot uses images
Appendix D: measurement details (2021)
ack
You can expand each of these:
Fedora’s dnf takes almost 25 seconds to fetch and unpack 84 MB.
% docker run --security-opt=seccomp:unconfined -t -i fedora /bin/bash
[root@62d3cae2e2f9 /]# time dnf install -y ack
Fedora 35 - x86_64 25 MB/s | 61 MB
Fedora 35 openh264 (From Cisco) - x86_64 3.5 kB/s | 2.5 kB
Fedora Modular 35 - x86_64 5.0 MB/s | 2.6 MB
Fedora 35 - x86_64 - Updates 6.0 MB/s | 9.3 MB
Fedora Modular 35 - x86_64 - Updates 4.1 MB/s | 3.3 MB
Dependencies resolved.
[…]
real 0m24.882s
user 0m17.377s
sys 0m0.835s
NixOS’s Nix takes a little under 7s to fetch and unpack 15 MB.
% docker run -t -i nixos/nix
39e9186422ba:/# time sh -c 'nix-channel --update && nix-env -iA nixpkgs.ack'
unpacking channels...
created 1 symlinks in user environment
installing 'perl5.34.0-ack-3.5.0'
these paths will be fetched (15.78 MiB download, 86.82 MiB unpacked):
/nix/store/11xpmmwy95396nkhih3qc3814lqhqb8f-libunistring-0.9.10
/nix/store/1h18nl3gisw89znbzbmnxhd7jk20xlff-perl5.34.0-File-Next-1.18
/nix/store/1mpxs3109cjrbhmi3q1vmvc0djz102pl-libidn2-2.3.2
/nix/store/jr35z7n8jbv9q89my50vhyndqd3y541i-attr-2.5.1
/nix/store/krc4xirbvjnff8m62snqdbayg46z5l5b-acl-2.3.1
/nix/store/mij848h2x5wiqkwhg027byvmf9x3gx7y-glibc-2.33-50
/nix/store/wq38iqzdh40dzfsndb927kh7y5bqh457-perl5.34.0-ack-3.5.0-man
/nix/store/xyn0240zrpprnspg3n0fi8c8aw5bq0mr-coreutils-8.32
/nix/store/y8r9ymbz59yjm1bwr3fdvd23jvcb2bzj-perl5.34.0-ack-3.5.0
/nix/store/ypr273yvmr07n5n1w1gbcqnhpw7lbbvz-perl-5.34.0
copying path '/nix/store/wq38iqzdh40dzfsndb927kh7y5bqh457-perl5.34.0-ack-3.5.0-man' from 'https://cache.nixos.org'...
copying path '/nix/store/11xpmmwy95396nkhih3qc3814lqhqb8f-libunistring-0.9.10' from 'https://cache.nixos.org'...
copying path '/nix/store/1h18nl3gisw89znbzbmnxhd7jk20xlff-perl5.34.0-File-Next-1.18' from 'https://cache.nixos.org'...
copying path '/nix/store/1mpxs3109cjrbhmi3q1vmvc0djz102pl-libidn2-2.3.2' from 'https://cache.nixos.org'...
copying path '/nix/store/mij848h2x5wiqkwhg027byvmf9x3gx7y-glibc-2.33-50' from 'https://cache.nixos.org'...
copying path '/nix/store/jr35z7n8jbv9q89my50vhyndqd3y541i-attr-2.5.1' from 'https://cache.nixos.org'...
copying path '/nix/store/krc4xirbvjnff8m62snqdbayg46z5l5b-acl-2.3.1' from 'https://cache.nixos.org'...
copying path '/nix/store/xyn0240zrpprnspg3n0fi8c8aw5bq0mr-coreutils-8.32' from 'https://cache.nixos.org'...
copying path '/nix/store/ypr273yvmr07n5n1w1gbcqnhpw7lbbvz-perl-5.34.0' from 'https://cache.nixos.org'...
copying path '/nix/store/y8r9ymbz59yjm1bwr3fdvd23jvcb2bzj-perl5.34.0-ack-3.5.0' from 'https://cache.nixos.org'...
building '/nix/store/pwlxhy7kry56z6593rh397fc49x5avlw-user-environment.drv'...
created 49 symlinks in user environment
real 0m 6.82s
user 0m 3.47s
sys 0m 2.11s
Debian’s apt takes about 3 seconds to fetch and unpack 16 MB.
% docker run -t -i debian:sid
root@40a3899b1f2f:/# time (apt update && apt install -y ack-grep)
Get:1 http://deb.debian.org/debian sid InRelease [165 kB]
Get:2 http://deb.debian.org/debian sid/main amd64 Packages [8800 kB]
Fetched 8965 kB in 1s (9495 kB/s)
[…]
The following NEW packages will be installed:
ack libfile-next-perl libgdbm-compat4 libgdbm6 libperl5.32 netbase perl perl-modules-5.32
0 upgraded, 8 newly installed, 0 to remove and 24 not upgraded.
Need to get 7479 kB of archives.
After this operation, 47.7 MB of additional disk space will be used.
[…]
real 0m3.260s
user 0m2.463s
sys 0m0.352s
Arch Linux’s pacman takes a little over 1s to fetch and unpack 25 MB.
% docker run -t -i archlinux:base
[root@9f6672688a64 /]# time (pacman -Sy && pacman -S --noconfirm ack)
:: Synchronizing package databases...
core 138.8 KiB 1542 KiB/s
extra 1569.8 KiB 26.9 MiB/s
community 5.8 MiB 92.2 MiB/s
resolving dependencies...
looking for conflicting packages...
Packages (5) db-5.3.28-5 gdbm-1.22-1 perl-5.34.0-2 perl-file-next-1.18-3 ack-3.5.0-2
Total Download Size: 16.77 MiB
Total Installed Size: 66.21 MiB
[…]
real 0m1.403s
user 0m0.484s
sys 0m0.211s
Alpine’s apk takes a little under 1 second to fetch and unpack 10 MB.
% docker run -t -i alpine
# time apk add ack
fetch https://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/v3.14/main/x86_64/APKINDEX.tar.gz
fetch https://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/v3.14/community/x86_64/APKINDEX.tar.gz
(1/4) Installing libbz2 (1.0.8-r1)
(2/4) Installing perl (5.32.1-r0)
(3/4) Installing perl-file-next (1.18-r2)
(4/4) Installing ack (3.5.0-r1)
Executing busybox-1.33.1-r3.trigger
OK: 43 MiB in 18 packages
real 0m 0.76s
user 0m 0.27s
sys 0m 0.09s
qemu
You can expand each of these:
Fedora’s dnf takes about 1 minute to fetch and unpack 350 MB.
% docker run -t -i fedora /bin/bash
[root@6a52ecfc3afa /]# time dnf install -y qemu
Fedora 35 - x86_64 15 MB/s | 61 MB
Fedora 35 openh264 (From Cisco) - x86_64 3.0 kB/s | 2.5 kB
Fedora Modular 35 - x86_64 5.2 MB/s | 2.6 MB
Fedora 35 - x86_64 - Updates 6.6 MB/s | 9.3 MB
Fedora Modular 35 - x86_64 - Updates 2.2 MB/s | 3.3 MB
Dependencies resolved.
[…]
Total download size: 274 M
Downloading Packages:
[…]
real 0m56.031s
user 0m31.275s
sys 0m3.868s
NixOS’s Nix takes almost 36s to fetch and unpack 230 MB.
% docker run -t -i nixos/nix
83971cf79f7e:/# time sh -c 'nix-channel --update && nix-env -iA nixpkgs.qemu'
unpacking channels...
created 1 symlinks in user environment
installing 'qemu-6.1.0'
these paths will be fetched (230.72 MiB download, 1424.84 MiB unpacked):
[…]
real 0m 36.55s
user 0m 19.83s
sys 0m 3.34s
Debian’s apt takes almost 39 seconds to fetch and unpack 256 MB.
% docker run -t -i debian:sid
root@b7cc25a927ab:/# time (apt update && apt install -y qemu-system-x86)
Get:1 http://deb.debian.org/debian sid InRelease [146 kB]
Get:2 http://deb.debian.org/debian sid/main amd64 Packages [8400 kB]
Fetched 8965 kB in 1s (9048 kB/s)
[…]
Fetched 247 MB in 4s (64.9 MB/s)
[…]
real 0m38.875s
user 0m21.282s
sys 0m5.298s
Arch Linux’s pacman takes about 10s to fetch and unpack 128 MB.
% docker run -t -i archlinux:base
[root@58c78bda08e8 /]# time (pacman -Sy && pacman -S --noconfirm qemu)
:: Synchronizing package databases...
core 138.7 KiB 1541 KiB/s
extra 1569.8 KiB 35.7 MiB/s
community 5.8 MiB 92.2 MiB/s
[…]
Total Download Size: 118.97 MiB
Total Installed Size: 586.68 MiB
[…]
real 0m10.542s
user 0m3.092s
sys 0m1.569s
Alpine’s apk takes only about 1.8 seconds to fetch and unpack 34 MB.
% docker run -t -i alpine
/ # time apk add qemu-system-x86_64
fetch https://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/v3.14/main/x86_64/APKINDEX.tar.gz
fetch https://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/v3.14/community/x86_64/APKINDEX.tar.gz
[…]
OK: 281 MiB in 66 packages
real 0m 1.83s
user 0m 0.77s
sys 0m 0.24s
Appendix C: measurement details (2020)
ack
You can expand each of these:
Fedora’s dnf takes almost 33 seconds to fetch and unpack 114 MB.
% docker run -t -i fedora /bin/bash
[root@62d3cae2e2f9 /]# time dnf install -y ack
Fedora 32 openh264 (From Cisco) - x86_64 1.9 kB/s | 2.5 kB 00:01
Fedora Modular 32 - x86_64 6.8 MB/s | 4.9 MB 00:00
Fedora Modular 32 - x86_64 - Updates 5.6 MB/s | 3.7 MB 00:00
Fedora 32 - x86_64 - Updates 9.9 MB/s | 23 MB 00:02
Fedora 32 - x86_64 39 MB/s | 70 MB 00:01
[…]
real 0m32.898s
user 0m25.121s
sys 0m1.408s
NixOS’s Nix takes a little over 5s to fetch and unpack 15 MB.
% docker run -t -i nixos/nix
39e9186422ba:/# time sh -c 'nix-channel --update && nix-env -iA nixpkgs.ack'
unpacking channels...
created 1 symlinks in user environment
installing 'perl5.32.0-ack-3.3.1'
these paths will be fetched (15.55 MiB download, 85.51 MiB unpacked):
/nix/store/34l8jdg76kmwl1nbbq84r2gka0kw6rc8-perl5.32.0-ack-3.3.1-man
/nix/store/9df65igwjmf2wbw0gbrrgair6piqjgmi-glibc-2.31
/nix/store/9fd4pjaxpjyyxvvmxy43y392l7yvcwy1-perl5.32.0-File-Next-1.18
/nix/store/czc3c1apx55s37qx4vadqhn3fhikchxi-libunistring-0.9.10
/nix/store/dj6n505iqrk7srn96a27jfp3i0zgwa1l-acl-2.2.53
/nix/store/ifayp0kvijq0n4x0bv51iqrb0yzyz77g-perl-5.32.0
/nix/store/w9wc0d31p4z93cbgxijws03j5s2c4gyf-coreutils-8.31
/nix/store/xim9l8hym4iga6d4azam4m0k0p1nw2rm-libidn2-2.3.0
/nix/store/y7i47qjmf10i1ngpnsavv88zjagypycd-attr-2.4.48
/nix/store/z45mp61h51ksxz28gds5110rf3wmqpdc-perl5.32.0-ack-3.3.1
copying path '/nix/store/34l8jdg76kmwl1nbbq84r2gka0kw6rc8-perl5.32.0-ack-3.3.1-man' from 'https://cache.nixos.org'...
copying path '/nix/store/czc3c1apx55s37qx4vadqhn3fhikchxi-libunistring-0.9.10' from 'https://cache.nixos.org'...
copying path '/nix/store/9fd4pjaxpjyyxvvmxy43y392l7yvcwy1-perl5.32.0-File-Next-1.18' from 'https://cache.nixos.org'...
copying path '/nix/store/xim9l8hym4iga6d4azam4m0k0p1nw2rm-libidn2-2.3.0' from 'https://cache.nixos.org'...
copying path '/nix/store/9df65igwjmf2wbw0gbrrgair6piqjgmi-glibc-2.31' from 'https://cache.nixos.org'...
copying path '/nix/store/y7i47qjmf10i1ngpnsavv88zjagypycd-attr-2.4.48' from 'https://cache.nixos.org'...
copying path '/nix/store/dj6n505iqrk7srn96a27jfp3i0zgwa1l-acl-2.2.53' from 'https://cache.nixos.org'...
copying path '/nix/store/w9wc0d31p4z93cbgxijws03j5s2c4gyf-coreutils-8.31' from 'https://cache.nixos.org'...
copying path '/nix/store/ifayp0kvijq0n4x0bv51iqrb0yzyz77g-perl-5.32.0' from 'https://cache.nixos.org'...
copying path '/nix/store/z45mp61h51ksxz28gds5110rf3wmqpdc-perl5.32.0-ack-3.3.1' from 'https://cache.nixos.org'...
building '/nix/store/m0rl62grplq7w7k3zqhlcz2hs99y332l-user-environment.drv'...
created 49 symlinks in user environment
real 0m 5.60s
user 0m 3.21s
sys 0m 1.66s
Debian’s apt takes almost 10 seconds to fetch and unpack 16 MB.
% docker run -t -i debian:sid
root@1996bb94a2d1:/# time (apt update && apt install -y ack-grep)
Get:1 http://deb.debian.org/debian sid InRelease [146 kB]
Get:2 http://deb.debian.org/debian sid/main amd64 Packages [8400 kB]
Fetched 8546 kB in 1s (8088 kB/s)
[…]
The following NEW packages will be installed:
ack libfile-next-perl libgdbm-compat4 libgdbm6 libperl5.30 netbase perl perl-modules-5.30
0 upgraded, 8 newly installed, 0 to remove and 23 not upgraded.
Need to get 7341 kB of archives.
After this operation, 46.7 MB of additional disk space will be used.
[…]
real 0m9.544s
user 0m2.839s
sys 0m0.775s
Arch Linux’s pacman takes a little under 3s to fetch and unpack 6.5 MB.
% docker run -t -i archlinux/base
[root@9f6672688a64 /]# time (pacman -Sy && pacman -S --noconfirm ack)
:: Synchronizing package databases...
core 130.8 KiB 1090 KiB/s 00:00
extra 1655.8 KiB 3.48 MiB/s 00:00
community 5.2 MiB 6.11 MiB/s 00:01
resolving dependencies...
looking for conflicting packages...
Packages (2) perl-file-next-1.18-2 ack-3.4.0-1
Total Download Size: 0.07 MiB
Total Installed Size: 0.19 MiB
[…]
real 0m2.936s
user 0m0.375s
sys 0m0.160s
Alpine’s apk takes a little over 1 second to fetch and unpack 10 MB.
% docker run -t -i alpine
fetch http://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/v3.12/main/x86_64/APKINDEX.tar.gz
fetch http://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/v3.12/community/x86_64/APKINDEX.tar.gz
(1/4) Installing libbz2 (1.0.8-r1)
(2/4) Installing perl (5.30.3-r0)
(3/4) Installing perl-file-next (1.18-r0)
(4/4) Installing ack (3.3.1-r0)
Executing busybox-1.31.1-r16.trigger
OK: 43 MiB in 18 packages
real 0m 1.24s
user 0m 0.40s
sys 0m 0.15s
qemu
You can expand each of these:
Fedora’s dnf takes over 4 minutes to fetch and unpack 226 MB.
% docker run -t -i fedora /bin/bash
[root@6a52ecfc3afa /]# time dnf install -y qemu
Fedora 32 openh264 (From Cisco) - x86_64 3.1 kB/s | 2.5 kB 00:00
Fedora Modular 32 - x86_64 6.3 MB/s | 4.9 MB 00:00
Fedora Modular 32 - x86_64 - Updates 6.0 MB/s | 3.7 MB 00:00
Fedora 32 - x86_64 - Updates 334 kB/s | 23 MB 01:10
Fedora 32 - x86_64 33 MB/s | 70 MB 00:02
[…]
Total download size: 181 M
Downloading Packages:
[…]
real 4m37.652s
user 0m38.239s
sys 0m6.321s
NixOS’s Nix takes almost 34s to fetch and unpack 180 MB.
% docker run -t -i nixos/nix
83971cf79f7e:/# time sh -c 'nix-channel --update && nix-env -iA nixpkgs.qemu'
unpacking channels...
created 1 symlinks in user environment
installing 'qemu-5.1.0'
these paths will be fetched (180.70 MiB download, 1146.92 MiB unpacked):
[…]
real 0m 33.64s
user 0m 16.96s
sys 0m 3.05s
Debian’s apt takes over 95 seconds to fetch and unpack 224 MB.
% docker run -t -i debian:sid
root@b7cc25a927ab:/# time (apt update && apt install -y qemu-system-x86)
Get:1 http://deb.debian.org/debian sid InRelease [146 kB]
Get:2 http://deb.debian.org/debian sid/main amd64 Packages [8400 kB]
Fetched 8546 kB in 1s (5998 kB/s)
[…]
Fetched 216 MB in 43s (5006 kB/s)
[…]
real 1m25.375s
user 0m29.163s
sys 0m12.835s
Arch Linux’s pacman takes almost 44s to fetch and unpack 142 MB.
% docker run -t -i archlinux/base
[root@58c78bda08e8 /]# time (pacman -Sy && pacman -S --noconfirm qemu)
:: Synchronizing package databases...
core 130.8 KiB 1055 KiB/s 00:00
extra 1655.8 KiB 3.70 MiB/s 00:00
community 5.2 MiB 7.89 MiB/s 00:01
[…]
Total Download Size: 135.46 MiB
Total Installed Size: 661.05 MiB
[…]
real 0m43.901s
user 0m4.980s
sys 0m2.615s
Alpine’s apk takes only about 2.4 seconds to fetch and unpack 26 MB.
% docker run -t -i alpine
/ # time apk add qemu-system-x86_64
fetch http://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/v3.10/main/x86_64/APKINDEX.tar.gz
fetch http://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/v3.10/community/x86_64/APKINDEX.tar.gz
[…]
OK: 78 MiB in 95 packages
real 0m 2.43s
user 0m 0.46s
sys 0m 0.09s
Appendix B: measurement details (2019)
ack
You can expand each of these:
Fedora’s dnf takes almost 30 seconds to fetch and unpack 107 MB.
% docker run -t -i fedora /bin/bash
[root@722e6df10258 /]# time dnf install -y ack
Fedora Modular 30 - x86_64 4.4 MB/s | 2.7 MB 00:00
Fedora Modular 30 - x86_64 - Updates 3.7 MB/s | 2.4 MB 00:00
Fedora 30 - x86_64 - Updates 17 MB/s | 19 MB 00:01
Fedora 30 - x86_64 31 MB/s | 70 MB 00:02
[…]
Install 44 Packages
Total download size: 13 M
Installed size: 42 M
[…]
real 0m29.498s
user 0m22.954s
sys 0m1.085s
NixOS’s Nix takes 14s to fetch and unpack 15 MB.
% docker run -t -i nixos/nix
39e9186422ba:/# time sh -c 'nix-channel --update && nix-env -i perl5.28.2-ack-2.28'
unpacking channels...
created 2 symlinks in user environment
installing 'perl5.28.2-ack-2.28'
these paths will be fetched (14.91 MiB download, 80.83 MiB unpacked):
/nix/store/57iv2vch31v8plcjrk97lcw1zbwb2n9r-perl-5.28.2
/nix/store/89gi8cbp8l5sf0m8pgynp2mh1c6pk1gk-attr-2.4.48
/nix/store/gkrpl3k6s43fkg71n0269yq3p1f0al88-perl5.28.2-ack-2.28-man
/nix/store/iykxb0bmfjmi7s53kfg6pjbfpd8jmza6-glibc-2.27
/nix/store/k8lhqzpaaymshchz8ky3z4653h4kln9d-coreutils-8.31
/nix/store/svgkibi7105pm151prywndsgvmc4qvzs-acl-2.2.53
/nix/store/x4knf14z1p0ci72gl314i7vza93iy7yc-perl5.28.2-File-Next-1.16
/nix/store/zfj7ria2kwqzqj9dh91kj9kwsynxdfk0-perl5.28.2-ack-2.28
copying path '/nix/store/gkrpl3k6s43fkg71n0269yq3p1f0al88-perl5.28.2-ack-2.28-man' from 'https://cache.nixos.org'...
copying path '/nix/store/iykxb0bmfjmi7s53kfg6pjbfpd8jmza6-glibc-2.27' from 'https://cache.nixos.org'...
copying path '/nix/store/x4knf14z1p0ci72gl314i7vza93iy7yc-perl5.28.2-File-Next-1.16' from 'https://cache.nixos.org'...
copying path '/nix/store/89gi8cbp8l5sf0m8pgynp2mh1c6pk1gk-attr-2.4.48' from 'https://cache.nixos.org'...
copying path '/nix/store/svgkibi7105pm151prywndsgvmc4qvzs-acl-2.2.53' from 'https://cache.nixos.org'...
copying path '/nix/store/k8lhqzpaaymshchz8ky3z4653h4kln9d-coreutils-8.31' from 'https://cache.nixos.org'...
copying path '/nix/store/57iv2vch31v8plcjrk97lcw1zbwb2n9r-perl-5.28.2' from 'https://cache.nixos.org'...
copying path '/nix/store/zfj7ria2kwqzqj9dh91kj9kwsynxdfk0-perl5.28.2-ack-2.28' from 'https://cache.nixos.org'...
building '/nix/store/q3243sjg91x1m8ipl0sj5gjzpnbgxrqw-user-environment.drv'...
created 56 symlinks in user environment
real 0m 14.02s
user 0m 8.83s
sys 0m 2.69s
Debian’s apt takes almost 10 seconds to fetch and unpack 16 MB.
% docker run -t -i debian:sid
root@b7cc25a927ab:/# time (apt update && apt install -y ack-grep)
Get:1 http://cdn-fastly.deb.debian.org/debian sid InRelease [233 kB]
Get:2 http://cdn-fastly.deb.debian.org/debian sid/main amd64 Packages [8270 kB]
Fetched 8502 kB in 2s (4764 kB/s)
[…]
The following NEW packages will be installed:
ack ack-grep libfile-next-perl libgdbm-compat4 libgdbm5 libperl5.26 netbase perl perl-modules-5.26
The following packages will be upgraded:
perl-base
1 upgraded, 9 newly installed, 0 to remove and 60 not upgraded.
Need to get 8238 kB of archives.
After this operation, 42.3 MB of additional disk space will be used.
[…]
real 0m9.096s
user 0m2.616s
sys 0m0.441s
Arch Linux’s pacman takes a little over 3s to fetch and unpack 6.5 MB.
% docker run -t -i archlinux/base
[root@9604e4ae2367 /]# time (pacman -Sy && pacman -S --noconfirm ack)
:: Synchronizing package databases...
core 132.2 KiB 1033K/s 00:00
extra 1629.6 KiB 2.95M/s 00:01
community 4.9 MiB 5.75M/s 00:01
[…]
Total Download Size: 0.07 MiB
Total Installed Size: 0.19 MiB
[…]
real 0m3.354s
user 0m0.224s
sys 0m0.049s
Alpine’s apk takes only about 1 second to fetch and unpack 10 MB.
% docker run -t -i alpine
/ # time apk add ack
fetch http://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/v3.10/main/x86_64/APKINDEX.tar.gz
fetch http://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/v3.10/community/x86_64/APKINDEX.tar.gz
(1/4) Installing perl-file-next (1.16-r0)
(2/4) Installing libbz2 (1.0.6-r7)
(3/4) Installing perl (5.28.2-r1)
(4/4) Installing ack (3.0.0-r0)
Executing busybox-1.30.1-r2.trigger
OK: 44 MiB in 18 packages
real 0m 0.96s
user 0m 0.25s
sys 0m 0.07s
qemu
You can expand each of these:
Fedora’s dnf takes over a minute to fetch and unpack 266 MB.
% docker run -t -i fedora /bin/bash
[root@722e6df10258 /]# time dnf install -y qemu
Fedora Modular 30 - x86_64 3.1 MB/s | 2.7 MB 00:00
Fedora Modular 30 - x86_64 - Updates 2.7 MB/s | 2.4 MB 00:00
Fedora 30 - x86_64 - Updates 20 MB/s | 19 MB 00:00
Fedora 30 - x86_64 31 MB/s | 70 MB 00:02
[…]
Install 262 Packages
Upgrade 4 Packages
Total download size: 172 M
[…]
real 1m7.877s
user 0m44.237s
sys 0m3.258s
NixOS’s Nix takes 38s to fetch and unpack 262 MB.
% docker run -t -i nixos/nix
39e9186422ba:/# time sh -c 'nix-channel --update && nix-env -i qemu-4.0.0'
unpacking channels...
created 2 symlinks in user environment
installing 'qemu-4.0.0'
these paths will be fetched (262.18 MiB download, 1364.54 MiB unpacked):
[…]
real 0m 38.49s
user 0m 26.52s
sys 0m 4.43s
Debian’s apt takes 51 seconds to fetch and unpack 159 MB.
% docker run -t -i debian:sid
root@b7cc25a927ab:/# time (apt update && apt install -y qemu-system-x86)
Get:1 http://cdn-fastly.deb.debian.org/debian sid InRelease [149 kB]
Get:2 http://cdn-fastly.deb.debian.org/debian sid/main amd64 Packages [8426 kB]
Fetched 8574 kB in 1s (6716 kB/s)
[…]
Fetched 151 MB in 2s (64.6 MB/s)
[…]
real 0m51.583s
user 0m15.671s
sys 0m3.732s
Arch Linux’s pacman takes 1m2s to fetch and unpack 124 MB.
% docker run -t -i archlinux/base
[root@9604e4ae2367 /]# time (pacman -Sy && pacman -S --noconfirm qemu)
:: Synchronizing package databases...
core 132.2 KiB 751K/s 00:00
extra 1629.6 KiB 3.04M/s 00:01
community 4.9 MiB 6.16M/s 00:01
[…]
Total Download Size: 123.20 MiB
Total Installed Size: 587.84 MiB
[…]
real 1m2.475s
user 0m9.272s
sys 0m2.458s
Alpine’s apk takes only about 2.4 seconds to fetch and unpack 26 MB.
% docker run -t -i alpine
/ # time apk add qemu-system-x86_64
fetch http://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/v3.10/main/x86_64/APKINDEX.tar.gz
fetch http://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/v3.10/community/x86_64/APKINDEX.tar.gz
[…]
OK: 78 MiB in 95 packages
real 0m 2.43s
user 0m 0.46s
sys 0m 0.09s
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