This evening I’m downloading the lastest distro of Xandros, which is my preferred flavor of Linux (mainly becuase it requires no knowledge of Linux, which is good becuase I have none). Anyway, their free ISO is downloadable as a torrent ($10 for the HTTP download). I origionally used good ‘ol BitTorrent for torrent files, but it started giving me shit and actually rarely ever finished downloading anything. I usually got error message that I wasn’t allowed to do this or that. Anyway, a few months ago I got Azureus for downloading torrents. Man, what a nice piece of software! You have much more control over sending and recieving the file pieces. Also, how else can you get cool visuals like the one above to display the swarm concept of torrent files?
Just for the record, I don’t find torrent the best way to get movies at home. It takes several hours to get a 30 minute TV show (on average, depending on the amount of peers) and I really don’t want to wait the days it would take to download a movie I can rent for $3 or even just buy for $15.
I was using the heck out of Azureus a few months back (the Mac version, of course) to find some great esoteric stuff that I can’t get my hands on, like season two of Twin Peaks. No one in this whole city had that VHS set for rent and it’s not available on DVD in the states. Anyway, because I have a laptop I usually don’t leave my computer on for long stretches so big bittorrent downloads aren’t my thing. Regardless, I’ve tried every Mac BT client I could find and Azureus is by far the best.
As for a flavor of *nix that requires no real knowledge, well, I’m sureyou know what I recommend.
Actually, that’s similar to what I’ve used it for (other than for getting this Linux distro, which I would normally download via http, ’cause that’s just easier). Angela is quite a fan of the show “Charmed”, and I was able to find the never aired pilot episode of the show for us to watch. That’s something I could never have done prior to something like underground file sharing via the internet. Further, it’s why I think IPTV is going to huge. People can find their Twin Peaks and unaired pilots, even if there’s not a large market for them.
As for *nix, I’m a the biggest fan of the Mac OS that doesn’t use it. However, my Linux Box is a toy that I’ve spent more time on than money. It’s kind of my garage project, but it sits on top of my desk. It servers no practical purpose what-so-ever. If I were to get a Mac, I would have to justify a great deal more cost, although virtually no learning curve. Almost the exact opposite to this Frankenstein.
Ack! You have season 2? You must give it to me!
Trey is asserting his fair use rights. Way to go Trey!