Doesn’t µTorrent check hashes?

(February 15, 2007)

These days, I’m preparing my »Linux distributions for beginners« talk I’m going to give at CLT 2007. This means that I download a bunch of distro DVDs, burn them and install Linux from them to see how they behave. Having made some bad experiences with broken HTTP downloads last year, I’m now using BitTorrent exclusively, because it’s extensively checksummed and every broken fragment is downloaded again until it is OK.

It just so happened that I switched to µTorrent a few weeks ago. Before that, I used Azureus, which is written in Java, takes ages to load, eats up quite some resources and crashes at least twice a week. (Yes, you read this correctly: Although it’s written in Java, it crashes. Hard. With a General Protection Fault, in a different module each time. Don’t ask me.) µTorrent solved these problems all at once. Granted, the UI is even more cryptic than Azureus’, but that’s a fair price for stability.
Read more …