How safe are torrents for linux distros download

I have been trying various Linux distros over the past few months - *buntu's,solydxk,debian 7.5 - and was trying to have a look at Crunchbang. Problem is it is only availabe by torrent ( no direct download). I am not comfortable with torrents as it seems to me that it involves joining unknown networks over which I have no control. In particular I understand that it also means certain parts of the iso I am downloading can at the same time be in the process of being uploaded from my computer. Can I be sure that:

• no other file can be uploaded from my computer
• no other file can be downloaded to my computer
• when the download is complete my computer is no longer connected to any torrent network.

 

Well, you can also get it here: http://crunchbang.linuxfreedom.com/download.html
And then you can check the md5sum against http://crunchbang.org/download/

 

You'll be fine. The only things that are shared when torrenting are listed in the torrent software under "active torrents" or whatever- it doesn't turn your whole PC into a FTP where anyone can access everything. Just shut the software down and you're done.

For the torrent software itself, I use qBittorrent ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QBittorrent ) with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PeerBlock Peerblock does a decent job in taking care of those unknown peers you're connecting to by trying to block connections to known malicious IPs.

The benefit with downloading Linux distos/other things with torrents is that sometimes the download is faster than if they were to host it themselves. But also torrenting helps their limited site bandwidth.

 

If you're downloading the torrent from a legitimate and official distro website, you're pretty certain to be safe. Nothing is ever 100% guaranteed, but still pretty certainly safe to do that. As for others downloading the torrent from you, well, that's a part of P2P. You don't get to choose to only download it yourself and no one else gets any pieces of the file from you while you're downloading it. Well, I guess you could block all the peers trying to download from you while you are still getting the file, but say goodbye to any chance of finishing the download if you do. As for Peerblock, don't bother if you're just going to download Linux torrents. No "bad peers" are going to care about that kind of torrenting, they only care about movies, music, etc. Also, Peerblock was never guaranteed protection to begin with. And now that you can't update the lists more than once a week without paying, its protection is probably bordering on useless.

 

Download from official sites, and you're good.
Mrk