At least in arch, the package qbittorrent-nox now contains the ability to connect to i2p. For people starting out, using i2p you wouldn’t need to use a VPN to download your favorite “linux ISOs”; just use i2p and have a fully automated Jellyfin server!
I recommend using i2pd as the i2p router
Does it work for the average joe?
If not, what’s missing such that we all can move to it?
It’s all free and open source! If you’re on windows it might be a little more difficult so at least having a linux PC you can reliably have on 24/7 would make things easier. I personally use arch (I’ve tried this on my endeavour OS), very easy installation for beginners) for this since it’s rolling release (latest versions of packages!) and the AUR is a godsend. The programs themselves take little ram and cpu, with qbittorrent probably needing the most ram once you have more torrents downloaded (I’m running this on 4 cores of CPU and 4 gigs of ram alongside my minecraft server, a tor relay and a monero node. any old laptop repurposed with endeavour should do the trick)
the steps I took to do this (on endeavour os) was:
install i2pd
sudo pacman -S i2pd
Install qbittorrent webui
sudo pacman -S qbittorrent-nox
install prowlarr (optionally sonarr and radarr, which will automatically manage video files for you. Plays reaaaally well with Jellyfin, so you wouldn’t have weirdly formatted files that is being read by Jellyfin)
yay -S prowlarryay -S sonarryay -S radarr
Lastly you have to turn enable the *arrs in systemd
sudo systemctl enable --now prowlarr- (do the same with sonarr and radarr if you have them)
(or you can also go the docker route with qbittorrent, prowlarr, sonarr and radarr, if you don’t have arch. This is the more universal route and can handle many more devices. Although I have not checked if
qbittorrent-dockerhas i2p integration yet. For that you may need to swap out qbittorrent for vuze, or apply the patch in the comment in the link i posted in the docker container [which is editing theqBittorrent.conffile])For the average joe i’d say it’ll be an afternoon’s worth of labor to set up, and the upside is not relying on a VPN to install content and a fully automated Jellyfin server! Plus you get to help the steadily-growing i2p network If you have more questions I’d be happy to answer here :)
So how does one actually use I2P?
if you install java i2p it should come with the browser and torrent client (i2psnark) pre-packaged
for i2pd (c++ implenetation) you have to configure firefox (i use librewolf with noscript) to use the http proxy (on port 4444).
Wouldnt it a take a month to download a Linux ISO over i2p?
Currently testing it. 20 peers. 1.5GB. Takes about 20 min.
I’d wager around 2 hours once the router has been running for a day or so.
