There was some good discussion on the Ubuntu NGO mailing list, about being able to update your Ubuntu installation without internet.
There was a reference to apt-zeroconf, putting forward this idea:
The idea is simple. On your home machines you check a box in the gui someplace, and then all your machines share their apt packages with each other. Which means that on release day you upgrade one machine, and then when you upgrade the others you don't have to redownload everything again. Nice huh? Combine this with deb delta syncing and you've got a nice little bandwidth saving solution.
Great suggestion!
The other question raised what you do if there is no internet at all. I described this scenario:
Here's a scenario: Could you somehow write the state of a particular Ubuntu installation to a 'config' file, where this file would contain the versions of all your packages? Then, you take this file with you, to a place with good bandwidth, and download all the updates you need?To make this very usable, perhaps there could be package manager like application (an "offline package manager"), that doesn't work with the system packages, but works with such a config file instead? I.e. it first writes the config file, and later (on a different computer) lets you load up the config file again, to see what updates are available, and what other applications you can install. All those are not installed, but downloaded instead, and can be burnt to disk, ready for installation. (Ideally with a handy installer program, perhaps via the same "offline package manager").
There may of course already be a similar system available that I don't know about :-) Any suggestions?
which prompted three suggestions:
Additional suggestions: