Thoughts and Questions On Yum, Up2Date. Etc.

[billg]

I used up2date immediately after FC2 installtion yesterday with no
problems or delays.  Five packages were installed.

Earlier today, I attempted to install a single package using yum:  yum
install <packagename>.

Yum was very, very slow. If I didn't know better, as a new user might
not, I would've assumed that it had crashed. Yum also began to downoad
headers for several packages other than the paclage I had requested.  I
terminated yum before it completed.

Two questions, then:  

1)  Is yum's unresponsiveness due to mirror load? If so, why wasn't
up2date slow?  Just dumb luck?  Do they not look at the same
repositories? 

2)  Why offer more than one way update a Fedora system?

I'd prefer to see a single tool used for updating as well as for
installing new packages.  Presumably, the latter functionality could be
added to up2date. (Perhaps an option to "List New Available Official
Packages").  The Xandros updater provides that functionality, I believe.
I'd also recommend that up2date display, by default, a short synopsis of
the need and purpose of each proposed update. And, of curse, a user
should never, ever, need to edit a source list to get the update tool to
work.