----- Original Message ----- > From: "Conrad Nelson" <y...@marupa.net> > > I think the number one reason why Linux package management via > Torrent > never took off is because it is frankly an incredibly terrible idea. > > Look, peer-to-peer is a great idea on paper, but it has several huge > strikes against it: > > 1. ISPs hate P2P even for legitimate uses, so if a Linux distro would > go > torrent on package managers those behind draconian ISPs will be out > of > luck, leading to less users. > Good point. It would have to be optional so users whose ISPs block BitTorrent could still access the standard repos.
> 2. EVERY package will become subject to the "popularity contest" > problem > in peer to peer. You'll likely have no problem installing common > apps, > but if you like to use something more specialized or obscure but > still > tracked in the official repository, you'll be lucky to get a decent > speed at all, to say nothing about the possibility you'll NEVER get > the > package. This is why torrents are fast in theory but dreadfully slow > in > practice (I have never in all my time seen a single torrent beat the > speeds of straight up downloading.) > Seems like this could be avoided if the existing repos simply seeded every file that they host. Then you could always get the files via BitTorrent even if no other regular users were seeding. Unless I'm missing something, torrent download speed could not be any slower than direct download speed, with the exception of the extra time it takes to contact the tracker and locate peers. -Rob -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/1292127528.33975942.1371753782116.javamail.r...@ptd.net
