Category: Linux

Linux related posts.

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Code Linux

New version of ds

I made some incremental improvements to my trusty synchronization tool. I have added ssh master connection sharing support, which should give a nice speed up in many cases. In addition to this, there are cleanups in auto completion code and more flexible command line parsing. There is a release on Github.

I do certain things the old fashioned way – synchronizing application config and data across different hosts is one of those areas. I don’t use Dropbox or other internet services for file sync purposes, except for the builtin Google stuff on my Android phone (which is mostly app config backup). I like to keep it peer-to-peer, simple and manual. And I like to keep my data private. Ds is just the right tool to make syncing that much easier, which I guess is the reason I wrote it.

Cloud services is not something I need to manage my data. I have my own “cloud services”: A synchronization scheme which works well enough, automated backups with regular encrypted offsite storage (a future blog post), personal web and file services and high speed fibre optic internet connection – all at home. I will admit to a certain level of NIH syndrome here, but my own solutions work well enough that I will not bother looking into something else yet.

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Linux

Distrowatching with Bittorrent

Updated ranking as of 25th of April:

  1. ubuntu-14.04.2-desktop-amd64.iso, ratio: 139
  2. ubuntu-14.04.2-desktop-i386.iso, ratio: 138
  3. ubuntu-14.10-desktop-i386.iso, ratio: 93.9
  4. ubuntu-14.10-desktop-amd64.iso, ratio: 87.0
  5. linuxmint-17.1-cinnamon-64bit.iso, ratio: 81.5
  6. debian-7.8.0-amd64-DVD-1.iso, ratio: 31.5
  7. Fedora-Live-Workstation-x86_64-21, ratio: 25.6
  8. debian-7.8.0-amd64-DVD-2.iso, ratio: 16.0
  9. debian-7.8.0-amd64-DVD-3.iso, ratio: 15.7
  10. Fedora-Live-Workstation-i686-21, ratio: 13.3
  11. debian-update-7.8.0-amd64-DVD-1.iso, ratio: 10.5
  12. 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:

  1. ubuntu-14.04.2-desktop-amd64.iso, ratio: 93.3
  2. ubuntu-14.04.2-desktop-i386.iso, raitio: 83.5
  3. ubuntu-14.10-desktop-i386.iso, ratio: 57.1
  4. ubuntu-14.10-desktop-amd64.iso, ratio: 53.0
  5. linuxmint-17.1-cinnamon-64bit.iso, ratio: 46.1
  6. debian-7.8.0-amd64-DVD-1.iso, ratio: 18.3
  7. Fedora-Live-Workstation-x86_64-21, ratio: 15.6
  8. debian-7.8.0-amd64-DVD-3.iso, ratio: 10.1
  9. debian-7.8.0-amd64-DVD-2.iso, ratio: 9.48
  10. Fedora-Live-Workstation-i686-21, ratio: 7.82
  11. debian-update-7.8.0-amd64-DVD-2.iso, ratio: 6.13
  12. 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.