Why does no distro utilise BitTorrent to distribute packages?
from moreeni@lemm.ee to linux@lemmy.ml on 10 Jun 10:23
https://lemm.ee/post/34239123

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?

#linux

threaded - newest

[deleted] on 10 Jun 10:32 next collapse

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Rogue@feddit.uk on 10 Jun 10:33 next collapse

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.

[deleted] on 10 Jun 10:36 next collapse

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mbfalzar@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 10 Jun 14:22 collapse

Do you have an example? Or is there a distro that does this by default? I’m pretty new to Linux and have never heard of it before

ryannathans@aussie.zone on 10 Jun 15:00 next collapse

I think they mean the distro iso/zip download

[deleted] on 10 Jun 15:58 collapse

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mbfalzar@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 10 Jun 22:01 collapse

Aren’t those the distros? Which one pulls packages using torrent

Dirk@lemmy.ml on 10 Jun 10:39 next collapse

Most common/relevant/larger distros do that at least for the install/live ISO.

lemmyvore@feddit.nl on 10 Jun 11:29 collapse

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

ducking_donuts@lemm.ee on 10 Jun 10:39 next collapse

At least Kali and Arch do

moreeni@lemm.ee on 10 Jun 10:50 collapse

Doesn’t Arch rely on mirrors to distribute packages?

ducking_donuts@lemm.ee on 10 Jun 12:06 collapse

You’re right - I misunderstood the question and thought you meant the distribution images

boredsquirrel@slrpnk.net on 10 Jun 10:58 next collapse

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.

sorrybookbroke@sh.itjust.works on 10 Jun 11:22 next collapse

That’s actually a really interesting idea. Windows even does something, or at a point did something, similar with system updates.

Peer to peer packages would have some privacy, and potential security issues of course but I like the thought

delirious_owl@discuss.online on 10 Jun 17:22 collapse

Good lord, and windows doesn’t have a way to verify their ISOs are authentic. Do they sign this p2p payload in any way? Seems like a great opportunity to spread a worm

GravitySpoiled@lemmy.ml on 10 Jun 11:36 next collapse

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.

treadful@lemmy.zip on 10 Jun 14:12 next collapse

It no more says that than hosting an HTTP mirror currently does.

Lemmchen@feddit.de on 10 Jun 23:56 collapse

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).

possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip on 11 Jun 00:27 collapse

You could just check the signature

utopiah@lemmy.ml on 10 Jun 11:55 next collapse

FWIW the “opposite”, namely Webseed, exists bittorrent.org/beps/bep_0019.html so… maybe some already do but it’s not even noticed because Wedseed of mirrors handle the load?

atzanteol@sh.itjust.works on 10 Jun 13:12 next collapse

BitTorrent would likely increase latency, not lower it. The bit torrent protocol is very inefficient for small files and large numbers of files (wiki.debian.org/DebTorrent - see “Problems”).

But I think your question is more “why not use p2p to download files” for which I think the answer is likely “because they don’t need to.” It would add complication and overhead to maintain. An FTP/HTTP server is pretty simple to setup / maintain and the tools already exist to maintain them. You can use round-robin DNS to gain some redundancy and a bit of load spread without much effort either.

Omega_Jimes@lemmy.ca on 10 Jun 23:37 collapse

Bittorrent is nice for getting isos, but it would pul my hair out if I tried to download patches with it.

delirious_owl@discuss.online on 10 Jun 17:20 next collapse

What are you talking about? All that torrent traffic that my ISP sees is definitely Linux ISOs.

Just doing my part

moreeni@lemm.ee on 10 Jun 20:34 collapse

Whatever I’m talking about is not Linux ISOs.

walden@sub.wetshaving.social on 10 Jun 22:54 collapse

I think they were joking.

FuCensorship@lemmy.today on 10 Jun 22:58 next collapse

Woosh

moreeni@lemm.ee on 10 Jun 23:41 collapse

They were joking about whole other thing. My topic has nothing to do with distro ISOs, I was talking about packages

walden@sub.wetshaving.social on 10 Jun 23:45 next collapse

A “joke” often references material that is related, but not the same.

moreeni@lemm.ee on 11 Jun 00:40 collapse

Uhhh no, judging by the others, people definitely seem to have problem with confusing what I was talking about exactly

walden@sub.wetshaving.social on 11 Jun 00:49 collapse

Linux ISO is slang for pirated content. They were clearly joking. www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Linux+ISO

moreeni@lemm.ee on 11 Jun 00:59 collapse

Dude, I get their joke, but Linux ISOs are irrelevant to the conversation. That’s what I wanted to point out, because many people get confused and think I was talking about them specifically

luciferofastora@lemmy.zip on 11 Jun 06:04 next collapse

I don’t think people were confused so much as bending the point a little to make a joke topical. It’s both “downloading Linux stuff”.

0x0@programming.dev on 11 Jun 09:24 collapse

HTTP 420

Goun@lemmy.ml on 11 Jun 05:00 collapse

Ohhhh I thought we were talking about ISOs this whole time! We love these ISOs, don’t we?

Sims@lemmy.ml on 10 Jun 22:07 next collapse

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…

biribiri11@lemmy.ml on 10 Jun 22:19 next collapse

Another thing not mentioned yet is maintenance overhead. These distros operate around the clock, all over the world, with talent from the likes of RH and co. There are far fewer people (who run your mirrors) who know how to maintain a torrent tracker (or similar), and on top of that, I haven’t really seen any good BitTorrent caching methods. Support would need to be added to your package manager of choice.

It also comes down to most client having asymmetric bandwidth, and that most users do not have every package installed and therefore can only distribute a very small amount of the total distro. Those users probably don’t want to be constantly uploading, either. I also can’t imagine torrents are too fun to work with when it comes to distributing constantly changing package manager metadata, too.

possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip on 11 Jun 00:25 next collapse

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 on 11 Jun 04:57 next collapse

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

oldfart@lemm.ee on 11 Jun 06:52 next collapse

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

Same for Armbian.

0x0@programming.dev on 11 Jun 09:22 next collapse

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

Source?

I use torrents/magnets for ISOs whenever i can.

bloodfart@lemmy.ml on 11 Jun 16:41 collapse

Literally get isos faster from torrents than from the mirrors lol.

makeasnek@lemmy.ml on 11 Jun 00:41 next collapse

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.

sntx@lemm.ee on 11 Jun 01:21 next collapse

Nix has an open issue on integrating IPFS support.

There’s also an old tutorial.

fruitycoder@sh.itjust.works on 12 Jun 03:44 collapse

Guix supports now. As does nerdctl of oci things

gandalf_der_12te@lemmy.blahaj.zone on 10 Jun 23:24 next collapse

I support this proposal.

arxdat@lemmy.ml on 11 Jun 13:14 next collapse

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

ElderWendigo@sh.itjust.works on 11 Jun 17:15 collapse

Lars ruined Napster. BitTorrent came around some time later after Limewire, Soulseek, and DirectConnect. Lars might have had something to say about Bit Torrent, but by that point no one was listening.

Besides, back then, we really were using BitTorrent mostly for Linux ISOs. At the time it was more reliable than http. It really sucked having to download an entire ISO again because it failed the checksum. BitTorrent alleviated that.

gnuhaut@lemmy.ml on 11 Jun 15:50 next collapse

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.

driving_crooner@lemmy.eco.br on 12 Jun 04:16 collapse

p2p is also cheaper, bandwidth-wise, but packages are usually not that big to justify it.

andrade@infosec.pub on 12 Jun 02:11 next collapse

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.

ubuntu.com/download/alternative-downloads

ReveredOxygen@sh.itjust.works on 12 Jun 04:18 next collapse

That’s not packages, that’s images. People download images relatively infrequently, but with rolling release distros, people download hundreds of packages on a regular basis

cobra89@beehaw.org on 12 Jun 05:56 collapse

They’re talking about packages you install, not the ISOs.

andrade@infosec.pub on 12 Jun 09:45 collapse

Ah, oops!

recarsion@discuss.tchncs.de on 12 Jun 20:54 collapse

To add to everything else mentioned, many places (schools, workplaces) don’t allow any usage of BitTorrent, even legal. A guy at my uni got yelled at for torrenting a Linux iso. Not to mention depending on where you live your ISP might be interested in that activity unless you’re using a vpn.