[aaronkaplan]

It seems to me that the delta thing has made updates slower, not faster. I have a reasonably fast network connection and a P4 CPU; maybe with a slow connection and a fast CPU the equation works out better with deltas. But I imagine the real advantage of using deltas is server-side, not client-side.

Deltas or no deltas, apt feels significantly faster, but yum isn't slow enough to be a real problem for me.

[nodata]

Delta downloads are slower if you have lots of bandwidth or have a local rpm source (squid or a local mirror). You can easily disable deltas.

Be careful: apt is deprecated. aptitude has been its replacement for a while now.