I don't understand your position here. If we went back to a more reasonable 7 or 14 year copyright term, how would that obviate the need for a license like the GPL, which permits instant use of code provided you share-alike? Those shorter copyright lengths would be pretty reasonable for books or movies, but would still suck for tech.
It can take forever, depending how many packages have changed since release, and mirror speed. Also pretty sure there's no checkbox, though that could have changed at some point.
(Fwiw, I'm not here to say "Windows good" or anything.)
Debian and Ubuntu installers do the same thing, and have for quite some time. You can cancel when you see it start grabbing apt sources, or just be offline.
I don't understand your position here. If we went back to a more reasonable 7 or 14 year copyright term, how would that obviate the need for a license like the GPL, which permits instant use of code provided you share-alike? Those shorter copyright lengths would be pretty reasonable for books or movies, but would still suck for tech.