> Those were both for the desktop.
These two links to the desktop (found on the download page) are 100%
functional, and return a 200 response code, as they should. Looking at their
activity level on the tracker, I see 165 downloads for the .zip and 14 for
the rpm, currently. Not an enormous amount, but enough to know that the
links are valid, and people are downloading the files using them.
http://torrents.plkr.org/plucker_desktop-1.4.0.2.zip.torrent
http://torrents.plkr.org/plucker-desktop-1.4.0.0-1.4.i386.rpm.torrent
> Also, neither of the win32 executables on the left hand side of the page
> for bittorrent installers end in exe. So IE has no clue what to do with
> them.
Might I suggest a more current browser, one that understands common
URI constructs? Those links don't have to end in .exe to download them. The
text after the filename is a parameter to the server itself (sourceforge,
not our servers) to instruct it to use the 'umn' (University of Minnesota)
mirror by default. If IE can't handle that, it seriously needs to be
upgraded. You might want to try the Mozilla browser (mozilla.orga), if you
want something much more current, standards-compliant, and secure.
> I guessed and renamed them to .exe and they worked but not everyone is
> going to think of that, especially people who are windows native and
> rarely, if ever, use unix.
Nor do they have to "rename" it, unless IE did the right thing
anyway and saved the file to disk, but added the param in the URI to the
saved-as filename, which would be pretty braindead.
> And finally. I happened to revisit the bittorent page and found the
> upgrade to 3.3.
The link on the download page points directly to the version 3.3
BitTorrent client. Did you get something different when you clicked on it?
> So I have no clue what to do next. I guess bittorrent is screwed up.
When you click on a file with a .torrent extension, BitTorrent (your
client application) is supposed to begin downloading it, using the location
and hash information in the .torrent file itself. If it didn't do that, your
BitTorrent client installation may have not been complete.
> So how long until you put the file up normally? I am not too keen on
> trying to learn and debug an entirely new and unrelated piece of software
> just to download your software. I have enough headaches in my life
> already.
BitTorrent is not a "file downloader". It is a peer-to-peer
application that spreads out the load of bandwidth on heavily-hit servers
(such as those running the Plucker website).
If you use it to download the file, and then disconnect the client,
you are not doing anybody else any good. BitTorrent works on the premise
that as you are downloading, you are ALSO uploading pieces of the file(s)
you're downloading, to other clients who are trying to download the same
file as well. It scales exponentially, based on the number of clients using
it.
With ftp and http, for example, the more people request one specific
file (plucker_desktop in this case), given a server-bandwith that doesn't
increase dynamically, each new user that wants to download that file, will
take longer, and will be slower to download, which impacts everyone else who
wants to download that same file.
Using BitTorrent, the more people request one particular file, the
FASTER the download goes, in a linearly-increasing fashion, because all of
the parts of the file are spread out across all peers, who actively are
sending and receiving between each other, to spread out the load.
When it works, it works amazingly well. We're getting close to
400k/sec. on downloads now. In fact, it keeps increasing faster and faster,
but the Plucker downloads aren't large enough in size to see what the
top-speed actually is.
> If its like a couple of days, I can wait. If it's a month, then it might
> be worth figuring out.
I think if you want to help contribute by using BitTorrent, it would
be worthwhile to learn how to use it. It will not only speed up your ability
to get these files, but it will continue to help everyone else who wants to
download the Plucker files as well... if you leave your BitTorrent client
running, of course.
There is talk about incorporating this into a browser at some point,
to speed standard internet browsing experiences as well. It very well may be
a technology that will become "standardized" in the future.
> All these problems aside I do look forward to using your software and it
> seems to be the best solution to my problems at hand. But I have to weigh
> hassle/time to utility just like the next guy.
We also have to weigh the hassles of the load we're under. With each
new release, Plucker becomes more and more popular, and is adopted by more
and more users, which means we still have to find ways to supply the
releases to those users. Since we are a completely 100% community-run
project, with no "commercial" ties, budgets, or responsibilities, we pay for
all of this on our own (bandwidth, servers, power, backups, disks, etc).
As a point of metric, in the last 13 days, we have seen a total of
43,355,578,128 bytes of Plucker downloaded from the main file links (not the
torrents or the cvs checkouts or web hits or the snapshot downloads, JUST
the release files from the download page). That's roughly 3.3 gigabytes a
day of just Plucker. When we do releases, it generally peaks around 10gb per
day. That's a lot of bandwidth, and a lot of downloads. We needed to find a
way to spread it out, and BitTorrent provided that solution for us.
With that in mind, would you rather download the files you want at
1-2k/sec, shared with 300 other users downloading them at exactly the same
time, or 400k/sec. by learning a new technology that will make it easier for
you, and for others, to download and use the software?
> Thanks in advance none the less for any help.
No problem. I wrote up a quick mini-FAQ on BitTorrent, which may
help answer some of your questions, if you'd like to read it. It has been
linked from the download page for awhile now.
http://www.plkr.org/plkr-bt-minifaq.html
Good luck!
d.
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