Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Fedora Core 2 released to Mirrors, Bittorrent

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the stuff-to-snag dept.

tom taylor writes "Fedora Core 2 has been released to mirrors, due for public consumption on Tuesday 18th May. However, you can grab it now via BitTorrent, so get it while it's fresh! It's available in both the 4 CD or DVD versions."

9 of 429 comments (clear)

  1. Great by arvindn · · Score: 5, Informative

    Despite all recent negative publicity, Fedora is a great distro for the hobbyist desktop. I've been running FC1 since its release without any problems. I wish they'd stuck to 3 CDs though. IIRC, the 4th CD consists of lots of languages (and nothing else) so most people can skip it. Kernel 2.6, gnome 2.6, kde 3.2... can't wait.

    1. Re:Great by JanneM · · Score: 5, Insightful

      "knowing a word or two" != "wanting to run the destop in English". I speak, read and write English fluently, and I prefer to have my desktop in Swedish anyway - together with support for Japanese, as I am studying the language.

      --
      Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
  2. Re:DVD Version? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    debian has a dvd version
    woody is about 7 cds for the i386 binarys alone

  3. Re:Is this the final release or test3? by boardumb · · Score: 5, Informative

    test3 came out at the end of April.
    this is the final

  4. I never understood the Bittorrent thing... by Noose+For+A+Neck · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Bittorrent seems like an odd way to distribute files for any extended length of time. It wholly depends on how many people are downloading it at any specific moment, so when you come back maybe 3 days later, the download speeds drop to a trickle because you're the only one downloading the file now. And nobody leaves their BT clients open longer than it takes to download a file - I'm sorry, but relying on people's altruistic behavior is plain stupid.

    Why not put it on a P2P network like eDonkey? People will probably have other downloads moving at the same time, so the particular file will have much more sources for a much longer period of time than with Bittorrent.

    Really, Bittorrent seems like a poor solution to a problem better solved by real P2P software.

    --

    Software piracy is victimless theft.

    1. Re:I never understood the Bittorrent thing... by dheltzel · · Score: 5, Interesting
      It wholly depends on how many people are downloading it at any specific moment, so when you come back maybe 3 days later, the download speeds drop to a trickle because you're the only one downloading the file now. And nobody leaves their BT clients open longer than it takes to download a file - I'm sorry, but relying on people's altruistic behavior is plain stupid.

      That's the whole point! After a few days, when everyone already has it, getting the ISO's the conventional way from the mirrors is no problems, but when the ISO's are first out, BT works great.

      And a lot of people (like me) do leave their Torrents run for a while. I throttle the upload (--max_upload_rate) so it doesn't hurt my interactivity much at all and let is run as long as possible, usually several days. I get a good feeling from being altruistic, and I bet I'm not that rare.

      Have you actually tried BT, or just read about it and decided it's not worthwhile? I'm amazed each time I use it. It often starts slow (right now it says it will take 1426 hours to download!) but then it really picks up (I'll be surprised if it takes more than 3 hours, probably less). It's always seemed faster than a straight download, and I'm giving back while getting my "fix". It's a win all around, IMO.

  5. The OFFICIAL torrent by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative
    Don't download a potentially hacked version of FC2 from unknown sources identified by ip numbers only.

    Use the official torrent when it appears on the tracker:

    http://torrent.dulug.duke.edu/

  6. Indeed you haven't understood bittorrent ;p by dmouritsendk · · Score: 5, Informative

    The idea is that the company distributes the torrent have set up a seeder. This way, if nobody besides your are downloading, you'll still get good download rates because you are the only one accessing the primary seeder. If the primary seeder gets overloaded, it wont matter much since your btclient will download from one of the many other client downloading the file.

    Think of this as a peer2peer accelerated download server, not a peer2peer network.

    try giving this a look:
    http://bitconjurer.org/BitTorrent/introduct ion.htm l

    This scalability is the primary reason that mandrake and blizzard is using BT, chances are this why fedora is using it too.

  7. New, working torrent by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    First of all, to correct some of the absurd rumor and inuendo running around, yes, these files are genuine and they match checksums signed by the fedora@redhat.com GPG key. So if you can't trust that you can't trust the distributor in general....

    Now, for all of the snotty people who were poo-pooing BitTorrent because their downloads weren't going a million megs a second, let me explain precisely why:

    YOU WEREN'T INVITED

    Y'see, the torrent that got posted to Slashdot was never intended for widespread consumption. The tracker was hosted on an individual's home DSL via a java client and simply wasn't expected to handle the load of widespread usage. Once the hordes of gimmie gimmie kiddies showed up it fell right over. Repeatedly. No wonder you couldn't get a decent transfer rate and your connections were timing out. Then, to make matters worse, half of the people who started connecting in the first big wave decided to disconnect and throw their downloads in the trash. Boy, that's going to help a torrent with one seed just a whole bunch. And again, let's remind ourselves: YOU WEREN'T INVITED.

    So now there's a new tracker and faster seeds and things are moving along nicely. And now you're invited. I'm sure you won't disappoint us by disconnecting your client the instant your download is done.

    http://kuix.de/fedora/

    Thank you for your patience and cooperation.