But I also see a direct download may help if you do not know where to get a torrent program. Or can not install a torrent program.

I think a torrent may also be the fastest way to download a file, as long as many people are "seeding" a torrent.

Maybe there could somehow be "spoofing of source addresses" with some torrent programs, but someone also could fake a download site or mirror to show a fake image.

And if a direct download site goes offline than you may not be able to get the image, but with a torrent maybe it is like having many sites or mirrors to get an image, or at least it's parts, from.

Like gnewsense-live-4.0-amd64-gnome.iso and gnewsense-live-4.0-i386-gnome.iso may still be shared with torrent files, even though it was removed April 2021 from https://www.gnu.org/distros/free-distros.html.

I do not know about the source though. I think I found those torrent files from archive.org as that site and it's torrent files was, at least partly, saved.

If people can not get to Hyperbola's website, but still have the torrent files, those people can still get the Hyperbola iso image.

I do not know much about how a torrent program works, but I like to use a program called "Transmission-gtk" I think, to download and seed torrents, like Trisquel and Hyperbola.

https://www.hyperbola.info/packages/?so … ansmission

As for malware, I think those types of torrents may be from websites that may not be sending free as in freedom software, though I do not know what people are downloading to also get malware.

The only other thing I can think of at this time about using a direct download instead of a torrent is that maybe peers could see your IP address like a website can, or "nodes" in-between where your computer is and where you are downloading from, but there may be ways to make that not as known like using some proxy.

Although an ISP can likely still know your IP address.

But I'm glad there are many ways to download files, to give users a choice, like how there is a browser to get files or the program "git" to clone a repository or the program "wget" to download a "zipped" or "tarball" or other file directly.

I see the Hyperbola blacklist shows "forces download a lot of git repositories to build it" and "does not download sources over https and does not use SHA-512 hash" in some of the things listed in the blacklist.

So whether this is because there are many build dependencies or because that could try to force the latest version "uses the unstable version (fresh)" checking checksums and signatures can also help to make sure you downloaded the correct file. That way you can check what version you are downloading.

And like direct download sites may go offline, git repositories could also go offline. But the "Sneakernet" and torrents may stay up.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sneakernet

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BitTorrent

- which is in the hands of users
- which offers packages basic but reliable with not so big ABI-changes
- which is always free and offering a full control

I know that the way towards this is not easy and combined with many issues. But so far Hyperbola GNU/Linux-libre 0.4.x is on a very good way and when more mirrors would be available or also mirroring the corresponding folder it would be more easy for us to link it direct.

I understand that I can use a mirror, but when I looked for the direct link in the Download section I could not find it right away. But I understood what you wanted to say.

We are also NOT part of the FSF. They are free to mirror and as Hyperbola is FSDG-compliant they do. But we won't recommend only one special mirror. Also here: Stop promoting such false arguments.

All mirrors are free to select either the package-repositories and inbound sources or more data.
You can find the ISO-files therefore:

https://mirror.cedia.org.ec/hyperbola/s … nux-libre/
https://mirror.fsf.org/hyperbola/source … nux-libre/
https://repo.hyperbola.info:50000/other … nux-libre/

If you think there is need for more mirrors: Please write the corresponding hosters in person or initialize an own one with the corresponding selection.

Why didn't you indicate this source ==>  mirror.fsf.org   <==== ?  Here you can use any libre dsitro without any problems via a direct link, I don’t use DANGEROUS options such as torrent.

EDIT (throgh): Stop promoting one source. It is your choice but not the one of the project. Therefore link deleted. Please look into next reply.