Quote Originally Posted by mac57
I am resisting BitTorrent for two reasons - first, most mirrors offer FTP, HTTP and RSYNC. I would like to use one of these methods as they are obviously preferred mechanisms. I have 6 Mbps DSL - I can frequently far exceed the 400 KB you mention below. Secondly however, BitTorrent is file sharing software, which means that my machine will end up serving data to others. That sucks Internet bandwidth and CPU, and I am a real fan of tightly controlling what happens on my machine in order to maximize performance. Finally of course, there is the FUD factor -
You really don't know what you are talking about. Of course FTP servers offer FTP downloads, but that doesn't make FTP the obviously prefered mechanism. BitTorrent is by far the most use protocol on the Internet, by volume, behind only TCP/IP (obviously of which it is a part of). There have been nearly 33 terabytes of Knoppix 4.0 DVD transfered in the last 9 days since it's release. Almost 11,000 completed good downloads by BitTorrent. BitTorrent is the prefered mechanism.

You may have great download capacity, but using it may be harder. I never got good download speeds from the mirrors, often was told that it would take a day or more to download a CD ISO. I could usually find one that would take only about 6 hours, but never one that would fill my modest DSL bandwidth. If things are any better now then I expect it is likly because of the number of users that have moved to BitTorrent and are not burdening the mirrors, not because of any capacity increase at the mirrors. But it hardly matters if your mirror download is corrupt (about 1/2 of mine were).

Yes, BitTorrent is sharing, you download and share your upload capacity at the same time. But it only shares the torrent or torrents that you download. There is no risk at all that other files will be transfered out. Yes, there are people out there using BitTorrent to transfer files that violate copyright, this is done with lots of different proptcols, including FTP servers too, so by your standards you should avoid using FTP. The real point is that Knoppix distribution by BitTorrent is exactly the kind of legal distribution that BitTorrent is designed for. I advocate it's legal use, not refuse or fear using it because some people have used it improperly. By your logic it would seem the enitre Internet should be shut down, but I perfer to enpower the legal user and go after the criminals rather than just not use a good tool because someone I don't like is using it too.

I'm not quite sure I understand your "serving data to others sucks bandwidth and CPU" issue, particularly when you want others to help you. Using your upload capacity really doesn't have a mesaurable impact on your downloading. You only have to upload while you are downloading. Many of us do run BitTorrent to seed and help pass along the file. I've been running it since the 4.0 DVD came out (I've seeded many other Knoppix ISOs in the past). I do hit the "pause button" on the BitTorrent client when I play on-line games, to keep my ping time fast and avoid lag. But I run it other times, including now, and see no impact on my normal web use at all. If people didn't do this then the entire system would break down since you download much faster than you upload. But fortunately many of us are willing to do our part to help Open Source software in ways we can.

The FUD is just supported by ignorance and clears up when you take the time to think. Sure, any file sharing machanism could be used to spread a virus, but the "victim" has to choose to download the virus. I don't doubt that there are many people trying to offer Torrents that claim to be windows software or pornography that actually do contain viruses. But you can't get infected by running BitTorrent unless you choose to actually download these files and even then unless you run them to trigger the virus. The Knoppix torrents are from the officiial source and contain the same files offered on the mirrors. No seeder can insert any virus in the distribution, because the original torrent file that you download from a trusted source contains checksum information for every small slice that you download as well as the entire large files. And modified part would be caught and replaced by a part from another seeder. There are no viruses spreading by BitTprrent from good torrents from trusted sources.

A lot of that FUD, by the way, is spread by Microsoft, a group that finally realized that here is yet another part of the internet that they don't dominate, and are now coming out with their own file downloading service. So of course they are doing what they always do to harm everyone else. It must really irk them to see Linux distributed by BitTorrent.

There are some peole offering questionable clients, and the client package that some victims download (from an FTP source) do contain spyware, adware, and worse. BUt the Official client, the one you are directed to by the Get Knoppix link near the top of this page, the one that actually uses the BitTorrent name, is well known to be clean. The sources are available and people have recompiled those sources and matched them to the distributed EXEs and inspected them closely. You would be smarter to fear what might lurk on the Knoppix DVD than to distrust the BitTorrent client itself.

So if you answer is "I didn't use it because I feared it", maybe my post helped answer your doubts and relieve your fears. If, as seemed to come across, your real response is that you just want the free download and you're willing to spite yourself and keep fighting with FTP even though it isn't working for you in order to not share any of your idle upload capacity with others, and that helping anyone else get a copy while you get yours is an abomination, then I don't think we can do much to help you.