Just had this idea pop up in my mind. Instead of relying on volunteers mirroring package repositories all around the world, why not utilise BitTorrent protocol to move at the very least some some load unto the users and thus increase download speeds as well as decrease latency?

  • Rogue@feddit.uk
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    1 year ago

    I suspect if this was enabled by default there would be uproar from people annoyed the distro was stealing their bandwidth, and if it were opt-in then very few people would do it.

    Windows Update uses peer to peer to distribute updates. It’s one of the first things I always disabled.

    • lemmyvore@feddit.nl
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      1 year ago

      OP is taking about packages and updates using peer to peer, not just the install media. AFAIK no distro does that.

  • GravitySpoiled@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    One reason is privacy and hence security. If you share a package, you also share the information that your system contains the oudtated package “xy” which has a backdoor and can be accessed by a hacker.

    I’m not sure if that is a valid argument with atomic image distros since you share the whole image. And the tracker could just disable the old image as soon as the new image arrives.

      • Lemmchen@feddit.de
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        1 year ago

        But as a third party you can not know which clients are using this outdated http mirror. On BitTorrent you can see every participating peers and some of them are probably enduser machines (depending on the actual implementation of OP’s suggestion).

  • gnuhaut@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    Because HTTP is simpler, faster, easier, more reliable.

    The motivation for a a lot of p2p is to make it harder to shut down, but there is no danger of that for Linux distros. The other would be to save money, but Debian/Arch/etc. get more than enough bandwidth/server donations, so they’re not paying for that anyway.

  • makeasnek@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    There is an apt variant that can do this, but nobody uses it. BitTorrent isn’t great for lots of small files overhead wise.

    IPFS is better for this than torrents. The question is always “how much should the client seed before they stop seeding and how longs should they attempt to seed before they give up”. I agree something like this should exist, I have no problem quickly re-donating any bandwidth I use.

  • arxdat@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    Metallica ruined it. They made it seem as though torrenting was evil because their content was being downloaded. Poor babies.

  • Sims@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    Over time I’ve seen several groups tinker with p2p protocols for packages. Latest using gnunet/ipfs for Guix packages. But I’ve never seen a working/integrated system. Weird…

  • ಠ_ಠ@infosec.pub
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    1 year ago

    Some distros do this already.

    Alternative downloads

    There are several other ways to get Ubuntu including torrents, which can potentially mean a quicker download, our network installer for older systems and special configurations and links to our regional mirrors for our older (and newer) releases.

    BitTorrent is a peer-to-peer download network that sometimes enables higher download speeds and more reliable downloads of large files. You need a BitTorrent client on your computer to enable this download method.

    https://ubuntu.com/download/alternative-downloads

  • Possibly linux@lemmy.zip
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    1 year ago

    That what Debian does with ISOs. However, no one uses it.

    If anything IPFS might be good for packages as the IPFS program could he embedded into the package manager.

    • Goun@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      We do use it! I download several Linux ISOs from bittorrent every week!

    • oldfart@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      I use bittorrent for isos and the files usually have hundreds of seeds. They are used.

      Same for Armbian.

    • 0x0@programming.dev
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      1 year ago

      That what Debian does with ISOs. However, no one uses it.

      Source?

      I use torrents/magnets for ISOs whenever i can.

  • boredsquirrel@slrpnk.net
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    1 year ago

    Reminds me of the Talk about distributing firmware.

    Bittorrent is poorly pretty suspicious which may be used as an argument. But I dont see the reason really.