Updated ranking as of 25th of April:
- ubuntu-14.04.2-desktop-amd64.iso, ratio: 139
- ubuntu-14.04.2-desktop-i386.iso, ratio: 138
- ubuntu-14.10-desktop-i386.iso, ratio: 93.9
- ubuntu-14.10-desktop-amd64.iso, ratio: 87.0
- linuxmint-17.1-cinnamon-64bit.iso, ratio: 81.5
- debian-7.8.0-amd64-DVD-1.iso, ratio: 31.5
- Fedora-Live-Workstation-x86_64-21, ratio: 25.6
- debian-7.8.0-amd64-DVD-2.iso, ratio: 16.0
- debian-7.8.0-amd64-DVD-3.iso, ratio: 15.7
- Fedora-Live-Workstation-i686-21, ratio: 13.3
- debian-update-7.8.0-amd64-DVD-1.iso, ratio: 10.5
- debian-update-7.8.0-amd64-DVD-2.iso, ratio: 8.90
Total running time: 21 days, total uploaded: 1.04 terabytes.
Originally posted:
I have plenty of spare bandwidth at home, so I’ve been seeding a small selection of popular Linux ISOs via Bittorrent continuously for about 12 days now. Upload-cap was set to 1024 KB/s divided equally amongst all torrents (this is only about en eighth of my total uplink capacity). Here are the results of the popularity contest as of now:
- ubuntu-14.04.2-desktop-amd64.iso, ratio: 93.3
-
ubuntu-14.04.2-desktop-i386.iso, raitio: 83.5
-
ubuntu-14.10-desktop-i386.iso, ratio: 57.1
-
ubuntu-14.10-desktop-amd64.iso, ratio: 53.0
-
linuxmint-17.1-cinnamon-64bit.iso, ratio: 46.1
-
debian-7.8.0-amd64-DVD-1.iso, ratio: 18.3
-
Fedora-Live-Workstation-x86_64-21, ratio: 15.6
-
debian-7.8.0-amd64-DVD-3.iso, ratio: 10.1
-
debian-7.8.0-amd64-DVD-2.iso, ratio: 9.48
-
Fedora-Live-Workstation-i686-21, ratio: 7.82
-
debian-update-7.8.0-amd64-DVD-2.iso, ratio: 6.13
-
debian-update-7.8.0-amd64-DVD-1.iso, ratio: 6.06
A total of 636.0 GB has been uploaded. These are Transmission stats obtained at the time of writing this post. Though not statistically significant by any means, it is still interesting to note that Ubuntu seems more popular than Linux Mint on Bittorrent (contrary to what distrowatch.org has to say about it). Also, the LTS version of Ubuntu is more popular than the current 14.10 stable release. (I should add that the ratio of the Debian DVD ISOs cannot be directly compared, since these images are significantly larger in size. And Linux Mint MATE edition is not present at all.)
The list happens to be in accordance with my recommendation to anyone wanting to try Linux for the first time, specifically Ubuntu: go for the LTS version. (Recent Linux Mint is now also based on Ubuntu-LTS.) Many years of experience have taught me that the interim releases have a lot more bugs, annoyances and less polish. Sure, you learn a lot by fixing problems, but it’s perhaps not the best first time experience.