That’s the question really. I hear the terms metadata and torrents thrown around all the time when talking about internet and privacy, but I don’t really understand them and when I tried googling torrents I was just confused. Can someone explain one or both like I’m 5?
I good example that’s completely legal is Linux distributions. They are licensed in a way that lets you share the file with other people so there is no risk of illegal activity.
You need torrent software installed that can speak the language of the torrenting protocol. Examples would be QBitTorrent, Transmission, and uTorrent, but there are others as well.
For the general process, you would download and install torrenting software, then you would go to a page that has torrent files (like this Ubuntu page), save the
.torrentfile and then from the software open that file, this will begin the download. Once it’s done, you have a full copy of the files on your computer.The only thing unique about torrents is that you are downloading parts of the file from a bunch of other people that have a copy, instead of downloading the whole file from just one single server.
On that topic, know of any good torrent clients for windows that don’t give your computer herpes, then cancer to the herpes?
I can’t speak for the Windows side as I’m one of those Linux users. But the ones I mentioned are ones I know off the top of my head because I see them mentioned often.
Wow, that was super informative. Thank you!
All of you commenting have been so much nicer than everyone on the tech pages. I don’t even go there because everyone is all “Linux is God, if you don’t understand everything about it why are you even on lemmy lolololol” and I just want some building blocks to start my knowledge :)