Monday, October 07, 2002

Red Hat 8 & Superfast downloading I just downloaded RH8 using BitTorrent.  I'm interested in test-driving evolution and a few other desktop apps,  so I thought I'd take it for a spin. I got a consistent 110K download,  with a 10-20K upload - it was amazing.  I love how BitTorrent inverts the demand/performance curve by working vastly better when a file is in high demand.  All three ISO's were dumped into my Temp folder when I returned to my machine (a single click in BT downloads multiple files.)  I then set up a VMWare Virtual Machine and mapped the CD-ROM to RH ISO #1 (no need to burn anything - thanks VMWare),  and had RH8 up and running 15 minutes later.   That was just too easy. On the mailing list someone suggestion contacting the distribution maintainers about using BT... I know Ximian was investigating Swarmcast a few years back,  but that never seemed to get past the demoware stage.  I was thinking how neat that would be,  but something occurred to me...  If I were Red Hat or Ximian,  making money by providing high bandwidth downloads of my software with up2date or red carpet ,  the last thing in the world I'd want to do is promote BitTorrent.  Doesn't it's use threaten a large chunk of revenue because it works so well?  10:59:36 AM      comment []  trackback []