What is Bit Torrent?
From the Bittorrent webpage, BitTorrent is a protocol for distributing files. It identifies content by URL and is designed to integrate seamlessly with the web. Its advantage over plain HTTP is that when multiple downloads of the same file happen concurrently, the downloaders upload to each other, making it possible for the file source to support very large numbers of downloaders with only a modest increase in its load. If we were people who didn't care at all about the details, we could say that Bittorrent is a cool, very fast way to download files from other people... but we are at a LUG, so we do care about the details, so everyone needs to go here to read more about the details of the protocol.

Alright, to get started using Bittorrent all we need is the client software. We'll use the basic python client which is available everywhere, but there are many graphical options (one which we'll talk about later) to choose from. Now to get the client on a Debian-based distro, all you need to do is type the command

apt-get install bittorrent

If you are using Red Hat, you can type

yum install bittorrent

or of course you could use the GUI application installer that comes with your distro by searching for a package named something like bittorrent.