I’ve had no ISP-provided Internet access since Feb. 2023 or so and, while it’s been a pain at times, I still haven’t caved into returning to the evil monopoly that is Spectrum, so far, and probably won’t for as long as I can’t land a remote job. ArrowDL, while not perfect, has been pretty good at download management for the most part in conjunction with mobile data-hotspotting.
I no longer torrent because I don’t want to catch malware or get activity warnings, and I want to try to do things legally. That is where the library, Hoopla Digital, Libby, and Kanopy come in. I’ve also moved quite a bit to FOSS. The most illegal I’ll typically go is /c/FullMoviesOnYouTube haha. Even then, I try to not do that much and just use NewPipe to download other, legal content. What I typically do is download when I’m on Wi-Fi for offline watching, unless I tolerate 480p (but I’m actually not really a movie buff anyway and am more into podcasts, articles, discussions like this, or games).
It depends on your throttle speed; typically >1 GB would be painful, but actually playing online is surprisingly doable for efficient games. I even played Hazelight Studios’ Split Fiction with a friend through a phone hotspot with no problem even in the throttled speed!
Immich may be new to me, or I forgot about it… Thanks for sharing.