I’m downloading what I think is the 2.79 portable from the .org index and wow is it slow.
Why doesn’t the BF have a bunch of these files available as torrents so that people could donate a bit of bandwidth to them, since it seems like they need it.
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Yeah it’s every time around the hype releases. That will get better in the following hours.
But you’re right an official torrent wouldn’t hurt. I would certainly share 24/7. My box is running anyway.
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Seems like a no-brainer for a non-profit with limited bandwidth. Blender is getting so popular now that maybe they need to think of methods to scale up delivery. Especially since more large companies are getting on board. Blizzard started using P2P methods for their patches and I think it worked for them.
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Well, we always have the opportunity to get one up ourselves. But it would give a better picture of the torrent were distributed through the official site.
I have no experience in setting one up and commit it to a tracker but it shouldn’t be black magic witchcraft. I think I will watch into it when I’m back home tonight.
Edit: which one do you need? I can upload one for you to gdrive.
Eh, torrents are not a good look because of their association with piracy. The speeds will settle down in a couple days like after every release.
A lot of projects are using torrents. Even LibreOffice
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@chalybeum Thanks, it’s finally down now.
@Piotr_Adamowicz Do you really think that’s why the BF would avoid it? I think it’s a bit silly to avoid such a clever protocol just because some ne’er-do-wells have got up to mischief with it.
Well, I think that if you’re trying to get industry professionals on board, torrents might give them pause. Everyday people not so much.
Ok, to each his own. I tend to believe that rather professionals understand that the Torrent in itself isn’t a filthy thing. It’s more the average Joe who’s concerned with horror storys of illegality and malware.
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I think I’m more concerned with getting Blender promptly than the supposed reputation of the protocol. Perhaps they could just do what Blizzard did and create a launcher and not call it a torrent. 
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Nooooo, please no launcher. That pesky MSI is heresy enough.
They probably could, but then again, the plain old downloads are working fine 99% of the time so why bother. And it’s not like you pay for bandwidth per gigabyte in Europe. At least with most providers.
Hmm, perhaps they are but there is no doubt that Blender is growing and the BF ought to try to give their users the best possible experience, shouldn’t they? If a major release comes along again and the servers chug there might be a few companies that can’t get a copy down depending on where they are in the world.
Not a fate worse than death or anything but it would be faster and cheaper than buying more servers for the BF.
@chalybeum Okay, nobody tell BF about my launcher idea.
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It doesn’t have to be either-or – having both the main site download and a torrent would split the load. Some people put mirrors up and that helps, but still.
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Look, I’m not trying to talk you down, and convincing me won’t help one bit. Go ahead and volunteer to maintain public torrents for Blender builds.
I’m just agreeing with the OP, at least that torrents would be a helpful option. I rarely use them myself, but plenty of people do, so it would reduce load on the main download link.
Combating the misrepresentation that torrent = piracy would be a side-benny.
The entirety of Blizzard’s downloader platform is based on torrents, and Steam uses a very similar technology. No one cares if torrents are used.
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I get Blender from Arch repository. Always up to date.
Don’t want to put you off or say you have to do otherwise but Blender is one of the few softwares I don’t use pacman for.
It violates the Blender philosophy and cuts you of from two big advantages of Blender. Self containment and portability.
In addition with a fast moving target as Blender it’s one of the few exceptions where I want to be able to have multiple version side by side on my system.
This might become a bit repetitive but for the sake of it I have to say it again.
Stop installing Blender! No one should.
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Guess I’m old enough to remember that for a short time Blender did indeed have a official torrent release on their site. i think it was around the 2.5/2.6 release window. But that was only due to the huge demand at that time.
I think that Ton understands the need and as already stated above. His main goal is for artists to have a tool , (as stated in various latest interview) but as Torrent is too … tainted, just like Bitcoins it’s hard.
The easiest thing, write to Ton on twitter and ask if he would or not and why. We could guess all we want but just ask him. He’s a really cool dude and will definitely respond if asked nicely and directly. Or also Pablo Vasquez… (i’m probably butchering his last name of course) …