Slackware and "bitdribble"
 

Hello all,

I have downloaded and installed slack 9.1 and must say I really like it.

However, I didn't come here to preach to the choir.

I came to say that downloading this distro through bittorrent was mind-numbingly slow. To the point of giving up on many occasions (with a broadband connection no less). Finally I was able to to get iso's 1 and 2 down and burned and was able to install.

Now, I have had some issues with my dsl and this may be partly to blame, but knowing how bittorrent works (or is supposed to work) I have decided to try and become part of the solution rather than bitch and moan.

I plan on making my downloaded files available through bittorrent both at home and at work (T1) every day for the next month and I encourage anyone who likes this distro, and has the capability, to do the same.

It would be a shame if people who wanted to use slack couldn't because nobody helped to make it available.

Thats all,

Steve

Franklin - very cool. This world could use more generous people such as yourself.

Note also that as an alternative to BitTorrent, you can also download the ISO's from www.linuxiso.org which is a great central location for many of the most popular distros. -- J.W.

Franklin, are you sure it wasn't a firewall or routing issue? Are you using NAT on a local lan to share the connection?

In either case, BitTorrent will require access (port forwarding) to a range of ports for you to really get any speed. It uses other ports to share what you've got, and without them you're technically not sharing any more bandwidth than a 56k user -- so BitTorrent gives you the same back.

I downloaded the 4CD set the same way you did, then smacked myself in the face after I read more about it and had waited approximately 10x longer than needed....

--Shade

Ya really, I have broadband and run thru a linux router and it took only about 3.5hrs to get the ISO source cd's(both of them).......bittorrent rocks, and what I like is it forces sharing.

If you have some sort of NAT firewall in place with your DSL connection then that could be the problem. You need to forward port 6881 to your computer using Bittorrent for it to work to its fullest capacity.

From the Bittorrent FAQ

I'm behind a firewall/NAT, can I use BitTorrent?

Yes, but you will get better performance if other peers can connect to you. By default, BitTorrent listens on port 6881, trying incrementially higher ports if it's unable to bind, and gives up after 6889 (the port range is configurable). It's up to you to figure out how to poke a hole in your firewall/NAT.