Ubuntu Gets a New BitTorrent Client
Have you ever used the BitTorrent client that’s been included in Ubuntu? It’s almost useless. The BitTorrent situation is being fixed with the inclusion of Transmission in Ubuntu 8.04.
Transmission has been built from the ground up to be a lightweight, yet powerful BitTorrent client. Its simple, intuitive interface is designed to integrate tightly with whatever computing environment you choose to use. Transmission strikes a balance between providing useful functionality without feature bloat. Furthermore, it is free for anyone to use or modify.
The newly released alpha 4 of Ubuntu 8.04 has replaced the old client with Transmission. GetDeb has Ubuntu packages for Transmission, although they failed to install on my Ubuntu 7.10 system.
Why Transmission instead of the more popular and feature-rich Deluge client? Transmission is lightweight, uses less resources, doesn’t include features that would be overkill for casual users, and has a simpler interface.
uTorrent is very popular Windows client that many even run on Linux using Wine. Windows users moving to Ubuntu would probably prefer the more uTorrent-like interface that Deluge offers. A recent version of Deluge is also available in the Ubuntu 8.04 repositories.
Archived Comments
Chonnawonga
I’d just like to report that the Transmission package from GetDeb seems to be working just fine for me.
Also, to answer the above question, one of the few preferences is “Ignore Unencrypted Peers” (unchecked by default) so I assume this means encryption is used by default.
Joe Smith
I’ve only recently heard about Transmission (being a longtime Deluge user), but it seems to be working out pretty well so far.
Anonymous
Transmission is a very good client, you should try it, I think it’s the best choice.
Qtin
I have not tried Transmission yet.
I am a Azureus user, I tried Deluge once and found the downloads to go very
slowly in comparison.
Does someone have other experiences?
How does the download speed compare between Transmission or Deluge?
Eris Siva
@dmt0029 - Yes. As Chonnawonga said, it does feature encryption.
Bob L
It installed just fine on 7.10, but still, I prefer to use KTorrent (even in GNOME), as it has a much larger feature set - I was used to uTorrent on Win32, and KTorrent is really close. I tried Deluge for a while, but it was so unstable on my system, it just wasn’t worth it. I’ll wait a couple more releases and try it again, but still…
Sikon
Those for whom it failed to install, why don’t you try the official backport?
anon
is it as lightweight and feature comparable to rtorrent ?
I know deluge is far from being a match to utorrent.
Anonymous
but how
Keheliya
I used uTorrent in windows and found kTorrent more familiar. But UI gave errors
when maximized etc. So I installed deluge & Bittornado. I prefer deluge. It
works pretty fine upto now.
Hoping to go for Transmission after seeing the reviews.
I only need faster downloads, RSS feeds, Resume of partially downloaded torrents
& setting priorites for files inside the torrent. Guess Transmission can provide
me with those features. Any ideas?
dmt0029
Does Transmission have encryption?