Fedora 12 boasts enhanced performance, improved reporting, better graphics

“Downloading updates

“One complaint that many have had with Fedora in the past is the
sheer volume of updates that are provided during a Fedora
lifecycle. Almost every other day there are updates for security,
bug fixes, and enhancements. Fedora 12 takes away some of this pain
with a few changes:

* RPM packages are using XZ for compression, instead of gzip,
which allows for smaller RPM packages. Smaller packages = smaller
downloads = faster downloads.
* The presto plugin for yum that was optional in Fedora 11 is now
enabled by default in Fedora 12. So when you do download a large
number of updates, the amount you’re downloading will be
considerably smaller because presto uses RPM deltas; the deltas
only contain files that have changed, and not the entire archive.
Typically this results in about 60-80% bandwidth savings, but with
RPM now using XZ, it could result in even more (compared to a
non-presto enabled Fedora 11, for example).”

Complete
Story