How many of you use Usenet VS torrents (sopuli.xyz)

submitted 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) by overload@sopuli.xyz to c/piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com

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Just wondering what a rough split is of people using either Usenet, torrents, or both?

I've only just discovered Usenet and while it is paid, it is very cheap and much more convenient than torrents.

Using torrents as well with the *arr suite set up for my various Linux ISOs.

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[-] overload@sopuli.xyz 6 points 6 months ago

I used the wiki on r/usenet, which was pretty helpful.

From my understanding, you need 3 things:

Usenet Provider (these are servers that host all of the content - you pay them to have access to download the content)
Indexer (this is kind of like Google but for the usenet providers - they will find and give you the .nzb file which will be used to access the content from the usenet provider above - you pay the indexer for their service)
Usenet client (This would be akin to a torrent client like Qbittorrent - it is the program which you use to download the content from the provider, using the .nzb file provided by the indexer)

Benefits of Usenet I believe are the high speed of downloads, generally accessibility to older and more niche content, and ease of use. You don't need to fish through torrents hoping that the seed/peer numbers are enough to actually get all of the content in good time. I've found a lot of stuff there lately that I have not been able to find via torrenting sites, but are important childhood media to me/my wife.

[-] jmp242@sopuli.xyz 9 points 6 months ago

Usenet is hurt a lot by takedown notices unfortunately. So lots of older popular stuff doesn't work. That said, things like Anime or something that isn't given a takedown seem to be on there about forever. The server speed is a benefit for sure.