On August 9, 2026, Tsinghua University’s TUNA mirror site published a notice titled Regarding the Removal of Several Software Mirrors. It reads:
Due to severe storage constraints, and in order to keep the service running, the TUNA mirror site has removed the following mirrors:
- Anaconda
- OpenWrt
- Flutter (
flutter-sdk.gitremains available)- GitLab EE
The rsync service for these mirrors has been discontinued. To avoid disrupting users, HTTP(S) requests to these paths will be redirected to the CERNET joint mirror site or to the respective upstream sources. We recommend downstream users switch mirror sites promptly to avoid inconvenience.
The TUNA mirror site will review its disk usage from time to time, and may continue to remove any content in the future without notice.
TUNA
If you work in software development or ops, TUNA probably needs no introduction — but here’s a short version anyway.
TUNA, short for Tsinghua University Student Network and Open Source Software Association, is a student tech club made up of Tsinghua students who care about networking and open source.
The Tsinghua Open Source Software Mirror Site was founded with support from Tsinghua’s Information Technology Center and is operated and maintained by TUNA.
What a mirror site is
Think of a mirror site as a branch store of the software’s official repository. It syncs a copy of the upstream packages, source code and installers onto its own servers, so everyone doesn’t have to pile onto the official servers overseas.
For users in China, the benefit is obvious: faster and more stable downloads. Linux updates, Python dependencies, all kinds of dev tooling — you may not notice it day to day, but when the network is bad, you learn to appreciate having a domestic mirror.
A mirror site isn’t the software’s publisher, though. It has to keep syncing with upstream, and it carries the bandwidth, storage and ops costs itself. So when a mirror gets removed, it usually doesn’t mean the software is gone — it just means you need a different download address, or back to the official source.
What was removed
The notice removes mirrors for four pieces of software.
Anaconda
Anaconda is a distribution and environment management toolkit aimed at Python data science, machine learning and scientific computing.
Anyone who works with Python knows it. Personally I only use the Conda environment manager, one virtual environment per project.
OpenWrt
OpenWrt is an open source Linux operating system built for routers and embedded network devices.
If you run a soft router, this one’s familiar — I use it too. It’s a router OS that makes your router capable of just about anything.
A lot of commercial routers are built on top of it, since it’s open source.
Flutter
Flutter is Google’s cross-platform app development framework, mainly using Dart.
I’ve never used it. For apps and mini-programs I go with HBuilder’s UniApp, as do most small shops in China. I don’t know it well enough to comment further.
GitLab EE
GitLab EE is GitLab’s enterprise edition. It includes the free features plus advanced enterprise features that require a paid license.
It’s a Git version management tool that every developer knows well, though most of us use GitLab CE, the free community edition.
What I think
This removal doesn’t add up to me. The stated reason is “severe storage constraints,” but OpenWrt is tiny — it can’t be taking meaningful disk space.
My guess is that OpenWrt ships plugins capable of deploying certain “special” capabilities, which creates some delicate compliance problem they have to pull it for. But removing only OpenWrt would be too obvious, so they bundled a few others in with it.
As for GitLab EE: there’s JiHu in China, and the domestic SaaS version is fully paid, unlike the international SaaS which has a free tier. Since the CEO change, I’ve found their approach pretty unpleasant to watch. There’s a commercial company for it now — let the company deal with the download problem.