this post was submitted on 07 Jan 2026
367 points (98.4% liked)
linuxmemes
28875 readers
1263 users here now
Hint: :q!
Sister communities:
Community rules (click to expand)
1. Follow the site-wide rules
- Instance-wide TOS: https://legal.lemmy.world/tos/
- Lemmy code of conduct: https://join-lemmy.org/docs/code_of_conduct.html
2. Be civil
- Understand the difference between a joke and an insult.
- Do not harrass or attack users for any reason. This includes using blanket terms, like "every user of thing".
- Don't get baited into back-and-forth insults. We are not animals.
- Leave remarks of "peasantry" to the PCMR community. If you dislike an OS/service/application, attack the thing you dislike, not the individuals who use it. Some people may not have a choice.
- Bigotry will not be tolerated.
3. Post Linux-related content
- Including Unix and BSD.
- Non-Linux content is acceptable as long as it makes a reference to Linux. For example, the poorly made mockery of
sudoin Windows. - No porn, no politics, no trolling or ragebaiting.
- Don't come looking for advice, this is not the right community.
4. No recent reposts
- Everybody uses Arch btw, can't quit Vim, <loves/tolerates/hates> systemd, and wants to interject for a moment. You can stop now.
5. π¬π§ Language/ΡΠ·ΡΠΊ/Sprache
- This is primarily an English-speaking community. π¬π§π¦πΊπΊπΈ
- Comments written in other languages are allowed.
- The substance of a post should be comprehensible for people who only speak English.
- Titles and post bodies written in other languages will be allowed, but only as long as the above rule is observed.
6. (NEW!) Regarding public figures
We all have our opinions, and certain public figures can be divisive. Keep in mind that this is a community for memes and light-hearted fun, not for airing grievances or leveling accusations. - Keep discussions polite and free of disparagement.
- We are never in possession of all of the facts. Defamatory comments will not be tolerated.
- Discussions that get too heated will be locked and offending comments removed. Β
Please report posts and comments that break these rules!
Important: never execute code or follow advice that you don't understand or can't verify, especially here. The word of the day is credibility. This is a meme community -- even the most helpful comments might just be shitposts that can damage your system. Be aware, be smart, don't remove France.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Noob here, is there a benefit to torrenting Linux distros rather than downloading them from the website?
Edit: thank you for the education!
Torrent is fully decentralised and therefore accessible in practically all jurisdictions, regardless of the server status.
In many cases, I have also found Torrents to be considerably faster than direct downloads β however, your mileage may vary.
I find they're faster too. Another benefit of them being distributed is the distributor doesn't have to pay for all the bandwidth for every download, which I understand can be a considerable savings for smaller distros.
Even better!
The torrent client also verifies the checksum for each chunk and automatically redownloads any corrupted chunks. With a direct download, you would have to manually verify the checksum and redownload the whole thing if it's corrupted.
i actually did not know that. now i have an excuse for never verifying pfffffff
You save the server bandwidth bills and have all the people currently downloading help you get it instead of competing with you. Also, most torrent clients are way more competent and featurefull for handling downloads than most browsers.
Usually, it doesn't make a lot of difference.
i tell people* it's because torrents are faster**
but it's really because they're cooler
*i made that up i've never gotten that far into a conversation about distro downloads
**in my experience it is actually a bit faster
If the cdn limits download speeds, it can be quite a bit faster. Like I have gigabit speeds at my library. Its faster to torrent the os and download it from my seedbox than it is to do a direct download.
gigabit!? what amazing country does this library exist in!?
It's my university library. Should have clarified.
that's still impressive!