Torrents have little to offer when you aren’t pirating bulky media files. And don’t track frequent release versions, code repos, or integrate with distribution packaging ecosystems.
Is there any practical reason they would offer torrent downloads?
Is there a practical reason a lot of FOSS project don't offer torrent downloads or is it just a stigma thing?
Submitted 1 month ago by colourlesspony@pawb.social to nostupidquestions@lemmy.world
Comments
aubeynarf@lemmynsfw.com 1 month ago
ozymandias117@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Windows uses them by default for updates (they call it “Delivery Optimization”)
apt-p2p exists, but it’s not installed by default, so is unlikely to have enough peers to be useful
aubeynarf@lemmynsfw.com 1 month ago
ah, so Distribution bandwith naturally matching number of users requesting.
I’m not sure if we are as bandwith constrained anymore
adhocfungus@midwest.social 1 month ago
I think size is the biggest factor. OS ISOs are pretty big, so having a managed download is helpful. If the 100 GB triple-A games were open source I would certainly expect torrents. But the FOSS things I download directly are pretty small, and the vast majority are done through a package manager or docker compose. So there may be a Goldilocks zone in the middle where it’d be helpful, but in those cases I’d expect a small installer that downloads the bulk of it for you.
So not much benefit for the consumer, but what about the provider? Spreading the traffic would reduce load on the hosting server which is a positive. You’d still have to handle the bulk of the traffic until the seeders outpace the leechers, but on long enough timescales it’d be helpful. Except you can’t really update a torrent, which means each release needs to start fresh. This still works for OS creators because updates tend to be far apart, there is a large user base, and there is still some market for older versions. For regular programs you may only get one of those three, at which point adding torrents may be more hassle than it’s worth.
Ephera@lemmy.ml 1 month ago
For me, it’s a matter of infrastructure for regular downloads being free. I just upload the distributable into a release on Codeberg and I’m done.
Whatever is needed to provide a torrent is just additional complexity, where I’m not sure it actually benefits anyone.
Of course, if I wanted to become more independent from my code hosting platform, torrents would be something to consider. But my projects are far too unknown to get seeded, so it would still just be a direct download with additional hoops.Nibodhika@lemmy.world 1 month ago
They do when it makes sense. Hosting small Giles is not a big deal, and small files would be a bad experience on torrent, since by the time you get peers to start the download you would have already finished it from a normal server, not to mention that you need to host the torrent file anyways. Also things that have lots of releases/patches are a bad experience, since people might be seeding an old version.
However, large files that only get sporadic releases, such as distros iso, can definitely benefit from it and you can usually find torrent links for them.
slazer2au@lemmy.world 1 month ago
I could be wrong but aren’t torrents immutable. So only that particular release is valid. Should a new patch be released a new torrent will need to be disseminated.
Compared this to a http download where you can reuse the /latest/ folder for water is the most recent release.
specialwall@midwest.social 1 month ago
I don’t think there’s stigma. Most users use package managers to get their software. For large operating systems, a torrent does help make downloads faster and less expensive when many people begin to seed it (and many FOSS operating systems do offer torrents), but most projects won’t benefit from that.
db2@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Most aren’t big enough to be worth the effort, either by size or userbase.
treadful@lemmy.zip 1 month ago
Also, it adds a whole 'nother layer of complexity. Now instead of just a Web server, you need a torrent client and all the CI/CD built up around it.
wildbus8979@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
Not really though web seeding is a thing