My current favourite (and it seems almost everyone else's) Linux distro is Ubuntu. I use it on my home server, on virtual machines at work, I even carry it on my USB stick. I find that the easiest, and probably the fastest, way to download Ubuntu is via BitTorrent. Using BitTorrent to download Open Source software is also a nice way to show your appreciation - you reduce project's bandwidth costs and help creators to distribute their product. This is especially true during the stable release time, when everyone rushes to get the latest release and direct downloads slow down to a crawl. This is the perfect time to use P2P, since hundreds of people already have the file you want and are willing to share it with you.
BitTorrent is not a silver bullet, however. It's only good when the file you want is a popular one. For example here's a some tracker stats for two Ubuntu releases, 10.04 is a stable release from a couple months back and maverick is the latest alpha:
| File | Seeders | Leechers |
| ubuntu-10.04-dvd-i386.iso | 1391 | 123 |
| ubuntu-10.04-server-i386.iso | 968 | 20 |
| maverick-dvd-i386.iso | 8 | 5 |
| maverick-server-i386.iso | 10 | 0 |
Not a lot of people care about the alpha release, so there are very few seeders and leechers. Since number of peers is low, P2P download will be slow and you might be better off just downloading the file directly. In Ubuntu's case there is a better solution - zsync.
