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?

  • ShittyKopper [they/them]English
    6•11 months ago

    I just want to quickly jot down that a fair bit of torrents are delivered through “magnet links” instead of .torrent files. An example is Arch Linux which has both.

    In most cases after you install a torrent client such as Qbittorrent, Deluge, Transmission or what have you, your system will automatically recognize magnet links and will offer to launch the software to handle it properly once you click it.

    cc @shadowSprite@lemmy.world

    • Undearius
      4•11 months ago

      Yes, thank you. I was going to explain that as well but asl owanted to keep it as basic and simple as possible. Honestly, I can’t recall the last time I actually alsaved and opened a torrent file, I’ve always used magnet links.

      If your computer doesn’t automatically open a magnet link when you click on it (usually you’ll just see a 🧲 that you can click on), you should be able to right click that icon to copy the link. Often the client will have an option to enter the magnet link when you select File>Open.

      • Undearius
        3•11 months ago

        For actually getting torrents loaded into the client software, there’s basically no difference. They both contain the information needed to start downloading the content.

        A torrent file just has the information needed to start the download, kind of like a text file.

        A magnet link is similar to any other link, like http://example.com/SomeFile.torrent. They’re a bit more complicated because the website example.com might remove or change the location of SomeFile.torrent and then any of the existing links won’t work. Magnet links aren’t affected by that sort of thing. I say this with the caveat that I honestly don’t really know or understand them fully because, like I first said, it doesn’t really matter.