Magnet links

[Jackson Doak]

to my knowledge, all clients do. vuze and transmission (the default) has
capabilities for both.
The extent of work is 30 minutes by one person to make a magnet link and
put it on the website.
Implementing this would give us one more thing to be the first to do.


On Tue, May 28, 2013 at 11:19 AM, Stephen Michael Kellat <
skellat at fastmail.net> wrote:

> On Tue, 28 May 2013 06:43:21 +1000
> Jackson Doak <noskcaj at ubuntu.com> wrote:
>
> > The Xubuntu website (and all of Ubuntu) currently only uses .torrent
> files
> > for it's torrent downloads, this is an obsolete format, and nearly all
> > other torrent sites (both legal only and sites that don't care) use
> magnet
> > links, either solely or as well as .torrent files.
> >
> > How they work:
> > file: link to "trackers", then downloads from a list from the trackers.
> > link: uses lots of confusing algorithms to ignore the need for trackers,
> so
> > no "middle man" and nothing to host, no download as well.
> > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnet_URI_scheme has more info.
> > both methods get similar amounts of peers
> >
> > Magnet links are easier to use than .torrent files and it is very likely
> > that if someone both has a torrent client and knows what xubuntu is, the
> > know about using magnet links.
> > The link may even be less confusing, because you don't download a file
> that
> > some people may think is xubuntu.
>
> Jackson,
>
> You've made a proposition towards using magnet links.  This needs to be
> built upon, though.  How many clients are there in the Ubuntu repositories
> that handle .torrent files?  How many clients are there in the Ubuntu
> repositories that handle magnet links?  To make a switch we have to have
> sufficient clients able to handle such.  The command line tool in the
> package "aria2c" is the only one I have found in my cursory look tonight.
>
> This is a useful thought exercise to go through.  A quick look at
> MirrorBrain.org shows that that magic redirection back-end software still
> doesn't have complete support for magnet links and it is what the openSUSE
> folks use to support a major chunk of their infrastructure.  It doesn't
> look like the Debian crew have adopted magnet links yet and a quick check
> at Mageia shows they've not adopted such either.
>
> Just because it is old doesn't mean it doesn't work.  After all, the world
> continues to have emacs roaming around.  The two key things that would need
> to be addressed would be client availability and infrastructure/costs
> benefits that might be derived from use.
>
> How would you address those two issues?
>
> Stephen Michael Kellat
>
>
>
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