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8

What GUI Based Torrent managers exist in Ubuntu and features they offer in terms of:

  • Speed to start downloading (Search Speed, Seed, Leech)
  • Speed while downloading
  • Compatibility
  • Stability
  • Data check
  • Other attributes
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6  
too bad you asked for GUI programs, I was about to recommend rtorrent – Sebastian Jun 13 '11 at 20:45
1  
We could use rtorrent with web based GUI :) – user16989 Jun 14 '11 at 2:30
1  
See also best bittorrent client on Linux on unix.stackexchange.com. – Faheem Mitha Jun 14 '11 at 7:51

11 Answers

up vote 29 down vote accepted

deluge Install X Install via the software center

enter image description here

What is Deluge?

Deluge is a full-featured BitTorrent client for Linux, OS X, Unix and Windows. It uses libtorrent in it's backend and features multiple user-interfaces including: GTK+, web and console. It has been designed using the client server model with a daemon process that handles all the bittorrent activity. The Deluge daemon is able to run on headless machines with the user-interfaces being able to connect remotely from any platform.

Deluge is not tied to any particular desktop environment and will work just fine in GNOME, KDE, XFCE and others.

The libtorrent library is a huge part of Deluge.

What about features?

Core/UI split allowing Deluge to run as a daemon
Connect remotely to the Deluge daemon
Web UI
Console UI
GTK+ UI
BitTorrent Protocol Encryption
Mainline DHT
Local Peer Discovery (aka LSD)
FAST protocol extension
µTorrent Peer Exchange
UPnP and NAT-PMP
Proxy support
Web seed
Private Torrents
Global and per-torrent speed limits
Configurable bandwidth scheduler
Password protection
RSS (via Plugin)
Other  libtorrent features

Installation

Install via command line :

sudo apt-get install deluge

Install use Deluge via PPA :

https://launchpad.net/~deluge-team/+archive/ppa Launchpad logo

ppa:deluge-team/ppa Launchpad logo (Click here for instructions on using PPAs.)

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2  
Am a big KTorrent fan but OMG this deluge has some very nice features. Give me 2 days to test it out versus KTorrent, qbittorrent and Torrentflux. – Luis Alvarado♦ Jun 13 '11 at 21:06
And it has plugins. – Brendan Long Jun 13 '11 at 21:48
after using the various torrent apps for years now, ive surmised my thoughts to this: transmission appears fine, but many torrents refuse to do anything in it. i dont use transmission anymore for this reason. ktorrent was my fave for a couple years, but the whole KDE thing never looked very pretty in gnome. ktorrent works and is fine. deluge is fast. i dont have never had a prob, it is easily customizable and JUST WORKS. my pick is Deluge. – I Heart Ubuntu Jun 16 '11 at 10:03
Bare in mind that it's written in Python and can be quite a RAM eater. If you're okay with that then this is an excellent choice. – EarthMind Jun 17 '11 at 22:15
Deluge is not allowed on many of the more popular private torrent sites unfortunately. – Thomas Boxley Oct 27 '11 at 17:40
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up vote 35 down vote

Transmission is a good Torrent client, it is installed by default .

enter image description here

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11  
Transmission is already installed by default in Ubuntu, no need to apt-get it. – MestreLion Jun 13 '11 at 20:12
8  
It's also one of the few clients that allow you to disable upload. – htorque Jun 13 '11 at 21:31
12  
@htorque Kind of defeats the purpose of a distributed data sharing model, doesn't it? – Marco Ceppi♦ Jun 13 '11 at 21:35
1  
@Marco Ceppi People who have a restriction on their download/uploads would find that feature very handy. – scouser73 Jun 13 '11 at 22:29
6  
@MarcoCeppi Yes, yet it doesn't violate the protocol specification and given the fact that BitTorrent is still widely used while such clients always existed, it seems to be no real problem at all. Like FOSS seems to work without everyone giving back. – htorque Jun 13 '11 at 23:10
up vote 25 down vote

Comparing the speeds of clients I think this is a difficult question to answer and can only be really tested in lab conditions.

I am one of the Deluge devs and we get quite a few people that rave about the transfer speed however the credit should really go to libtorrent(rasterbar) which does all the heavy lifting and is at the core of Deluge plus many other clients such as qBitTorrent.

As for features there is a large table of torrent client comparisons on wikipedia

From a personal viewpoint I use Deluge torrent client as I perceive it to be the best client for Ubuntu, written in Python with an excellent server/client setup so can be accessed via web, console and gui. It also has a good range of plugins and is very stable.

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3  
Wow, a Deluge dev here? Im a great fan! Its my favorite torrent client. – MestreLion Jun 13 '11 at 20:25
The clever thing about Deluge is that the server/client is hidden. You download and start Deluge and if that's the PC you keep on all the time, you just leave it running. Then on your laptop, you run another instance of Deluge, but instruct it in the GUI to connect to your server. Very slickly done. And a great, full featured BitTorrent client in every other way. Highly recommended. – Scaine Jun 13 '11 at 21:46
Deluge is great but it doesn't seem to play well with Unity - at least not at v1.3.1; the newer version doesn't exist in the Natty PPA. Deluge doesn't appear in my new notification bar or in the dock, so I can no longer access the UI and have to kill it through the system monitor. – pdr Jun 14 '11 at 1:32
@pdr 1.3.1 for natty is in the official Ubuntu repo and works perfectly fine. 1.3.2 will be in PPA very soon. – Cas Jun 14 '11 at 1:44
Well that wasn't very obvious, but thanks. Now Deluge rocks again – pdr Jun 14 '11 at 19:24
up vote 9 down vote

All anecdotal here, but after trying a lot I ended up preferring qBittorrent. It is another libtorrent(rasterbar) based client and it performs well for me. Coming from Windows I wanted something with many of the capabilities I was used to with uTorrent and the two I found that best met that criteria were qBittorrent and KTorrent, and since I wasn't using KDE I went with qBittorrent.

qBittorrent

enter image description here

KTorrent

enter image description here

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ive never heard of this before, but screenshots look very promising. And, since it uses the same lib as Deluge, one can expect a similar perfomance (and maybe, unfortunately, same CPU and RAM exessive usage). But a uTorrent similar UI is welcome, t – MestreLion Jun 13 '11 at 20:29
Give it a shot, for me it is not resource heavy (and I'm on a netbook). After I discovered it I uninstalled uTorrent/WINE. I still keep Transmission around as a couple of private tracker I sometimes use still haven't whitelisted libtorrent/rasterbar clients. – mvario Jun 13 '11 at 21:31
I am trying it right now. Migrated my 4 active torrents from Deluge. So far looks great. I loved the "alternate speed" quick toggle. "sequential download" is awesome too! I just hope the "Set Location" option is equivalent to the "Move Storage" in Deluge: moves all files even from currently downloading torrents to another location. – MestreLion Jun 13 '11 at 22:08
up vote 6 down vote

I recommend and use Ktorrent , In the software Center.

KTorrent is a BitTorrent client written in C++

Features

  • Upload and download speed capping / throttling & scheduling.
    • Internet searching with torrent search engines using KHTML part.
    • Support for UDP trackers.
    • IP address blocklist plugin.
    • Port forwarding with UPnP (Universal Plug and Play).
    • Protocol encryption.
    • DHT (mainline version), and support for trackerless torrents.
    • µTorrent peer exchange (PEX) support.
    • File Prioritization.
    • Ability to import partially-downloaded files.
    • Directory scanner to automatically watch directories for new torrents.
    • Manual addition of trackers to torrents.
    • RSS feed support.
    • Web interface plugin with default port number 8080.
    • IPv6 support.
    • SOCKS v4 and v5 support.

New features of KTorrent 4.1.1:

  • µTP support
    • Generation and parsing of magnet links
    • UDP tracker scraping
    • Enhanced usability of the queue manager
    • Optional disabling of the webinterface authentication
    • Super-seeding support

Latest version 4.1.1 : How to install Ktorrent 4.1.1?

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1  
Ubuntu users typically overlook this one because it has a K in the name. I was having issues with Deluge a while back so fell back to KTorrent. As you say, it has a huge number of features and it's relatively stable. Unfortunately with KDE applications, with features comes UI bloat. Doing some things is like trying to fly a spaceship. Good for power users though. – Oli♦ Jun 14 '11 at 12:05
@Oli: I couldn't agree with you more! Sometimes I hate to say what I'm going to say, is that some applications in Ubuntu need a replacement. But yeah I use Ktorrent for it's great feautres. Honestly I didn't use deluge till now ,but I'm going to give it a try very soon. – Binarylife Jun 14 '11 at 12:20
up vote 4 down vote

µtorrent, a Windows application, works surprisingly well using wine. On my Natty box, I use an older version, 2.0.4 (get it here). It works more or less as you would expect. You can run it without installation if you supply the /NOINSTALL parameter.

Note that there is a Linux version in the works, but so far it has no GUI. Also note that it is not free software, so it is not for purists.

Why would you want to use a proprietary program like µtorrent where native programs are available? It is tiny. You can very easily restart it if something doesn't work. It is reasonably stable and works reliably. It has a good minimalistic interface. It supports RSS feeds.

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I thought Linux had a version of µtorrent? – DexterP17 Jun 13 '11 at 22:58
@DexterP17 just a server not a client – Cas Jun 14 '11 at 0:30
I was a huge µTorrent fan on Windows, but Deluge is pretty much the same, but a native Linux program. – Brendan Long Jun 14 '11 at 3:12
I agree that unless you have a reason, you should stick with Deluge or a different native Linux client. – loevborg Jun 14 '11 at 7:33
Very similar is also qBittorent and Flush – cipricus Mar 21 '12 at 16:58
up vote 3 down vote

qBittorrent Install qBittorrent Install via the software center

Description

An advanced and multi-platform BitTorrent client with a nice Qt4 user interface as well as a Web UI for remote control and an integrated search engine. qBittorrent aims to meet the needs of most users while using as little CPU and memory as possible.

Features

Simultaneous download of multiple torrents
Integrated torrent search engine
Integrated RSS feed reader and downloader
Good internationalization
DHT, PeX, Encryption, LSD, UPnP, NAT-PMP
Cross platform (Linux, Mac Os, Windows)
Very lightweight
Torrent queueing and prioritizing
Control over files in a torrent (filtering, prioritizing)
Nice µTorrent-like interface with Qt4 toolkit (qBittorrent v2.x)
IP filtering (eMule dat files or PeerGuardian files)
Peer display with country and hostname resolution (qBittorrent v2.x)
Advanced control over torrent trackers (qBittorrent v2.x)
µTorrent peer id spoofing to avoid tracker blacklisting
Closest open source equivalent to µTorrent (qBittorrent v2.x)
Torrent creation tool
Remote control through Secure Web User Interface
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Am actually using this one right now. Very nice, fast to start downloading. – Luis Alvarado♦ Oct 27 '11 at 16:17
It even lets you change the tray icon ! – cipricus Mar 11 '12 at 15:14
up vote 2 down vote

I'm still using the good and old Vuze (Azureus) client: http://www.vuze.com/ Some people may consider it bloatware but I really like it's power. With some tunning I have achieved the best download speed for my network (warning: subjective and empiric benchmarks lol). It's search features are pretty ok if you want to use it. And you can always fall back to the "Advanced Interface" (old Azureus Style).

Cheers,

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2  
There has also been a lot of talk about Tixati. The newest kid on the block. – Anthony Accioly Jun 13 '11 at 21:38
+1, Azureus/Vuze is most advanced torrent client available, and it works on every platform since it's written in Java. IT also has many useful plugins available. If you can afford the RAM, this one is the best! – EarthMind Jun 17 '11 at 22:18
up vote 2 down vote

I have tried Vuze, but as a former utorrent user cannot cope with that heavy memory use. Transmission and Bittornado are very poorly featured compared to the rest and with no big economy on resources. I tested KTorrent and it seemed ok, but finally experienced some speed deficiency and rather heavy use of my ram.

I am happy to have found and to recommend qBittorrent and Flush. Much lighter (especially Flush). See how to install here.

(By the way - utorrent in Wine is much heavier than in windows and a few times forced me to reboot. Version 2.0 is more stable than the rest.)

qBittorent and Flush may seem to advanced users to still lack complex settings. In this sense, Deluge is very good I think, largely used and trustworthy (to install go to Synaptic or Ubuntu Software Center).

Another interesting one is Tixati (to install here). Just look at its features: chat tixati tixati bandwidth tixati DHT tixati settings

(The only thing I don't like is the colorful tray icon. The rest of the colors are customizable.)

Considering memory use, it seems that all the clients that I mentioned have about the same 'weight' - excepting Vuze, which is java-style bloated and heavy, and Flush, which is lighter.

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Thank you. Will be testing Flush. I also agree with what you say here although I have not yet had any problems with ktorrent. – Luis Alvarado♦ Mar 8 '12 at 15:13
up vote 1 down vote

Hands down winner is rtorrent. The encryption is best in rtorrent and you can easily bypass the ISP throttling. I used to 2mbps speed with it while all other including utorrent or transmission or vuze gave me just 700kbps to 800kbps max. Below is the link to the tutorial about how to use rtorrent like a pro, it will help you get started quickly http://harbhag.wordpress.com/2010/06/30/tutorial-using-rtorrent-on-linux-like-a-pro/

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Azureus supports encryption too. – EarthMind Jun 17 '11 at 22:18
No doubt that it does. – Harbhag Jun 18 '11 at 4:47
I followed the instructions there and sadly the speed I get is lower than on the GUI I use (Flush, qTorrent). I would love to get the right settings and use rtorrent at its best. Is there any improvement that you made to settings given at the link you posted? – cipricus Mar 9 '12 at 14:05
up vote 1 down vote

Seeing how my question, What's the best BitTorrent client for 12.10 excluding utorrent?, was closed as an exact duplicate of this question I thought I might as well post the answer I gave to it here.

Transmission

Transmission is the default BitTorrent client of Ubuntu and does favourably. Customer reviews in the software centre give it a 4/5 rating with those less than satisfied with it citing the following as limitations/problems:

  • "Very basic..."
    ~ Michael Alderson
  • "Works fine and pretty much stable, but lacks some even the most basic features. Also, the interface seems a bit cumbersome."
    ~ E S

It was unanimous among those that did a review of Transmission in the software centre that it was a relatively stable alternative over other BitTorrent clients.

As of the time of this answer (14 Dec 2012) the software centre is lagging a little in the version of Transmission it provides. The latest version in the software centre is 2.61 whereas the latest version of it to date is 2.73.

qBittorrent

qBittorrent rather unanimously receives positive reviews from users with the review of BitTorrent clients http://www.techsupportalert.com/best-free-bittorrent-client.htm [mainly aimed at those wanting a free client for Windows] quoting its stability, low RAM usage and consistent CPU usage and encompassment of basic features as its strong suits and its inability to serve multiuser operations being its main limitation.

In the software centre the sole limitation of instability was quoted as an issue with the client receiving an approximate, overall star rating of ~9/10. (4 & 1/2 out of 5)

Likewise as of 14 December 2012 qBitTorrent is lagging behind in the software centre a little. The latest version in the software centre being 3.0.5 whereas the latest version to date is 3.0.6.

Vuze

Vuze is a popular BitTorrent client not only in Ubuntu but also in Windows. In the software centre the primary complaint about it is that it is, 'buggy,' or, mostly, in other words it is prone to crashing. One reviewer even stated it is the buggiest app in the software centre they had seen in their six years of using Ubuntu.

Other than that the major complaint is that the software centre is lagging heavily when it comes to the latest version Vuze it provides. (4.3 vs. 4.8 being the latest release)

This problem, may, however, be overcome by downloading the tarball found at http://www.vuze.com/download.php extracting it and then running the executable shell script, 'vuze' in the extracted directory.

Overall in the software centre it receives 4/5 stars with most quoting its benefits as being its many features and ease of implementing it.

Deluge

As far as reviews go there are none in the software centre the pros and cons given at the review earlier quoted (http://www.techsupportalert.com/best-free-bittorrent-client.htm) are: Pros: Cross platform client that is stable for the most part and efficient. Well accepted at private trackers. Excellent performance on torrents. Good help resources. Clean install, no addons etc. Cons: Issue with Add Torrent screen not showing files for magnet links so they can not be deselected before adding to download (they may be deselected after adding).

With the reviewer also stating that its performance, in his/her opinion, was a little behind that of qBittorrent.

Tixati

The review, http://www.techsupportalert.com/best-free-bittorrent-client.htm, says that the pros and cons of this software are: (although the software centre does not store it so no reviews from that source are available)

Pros: Generally stable and efficient with a good variety of options. Developers are active and responsive to user requests. Attractive interface. Good help resources. No addons etc. during install.

Cons: Help resource, though very good, could use some more. Smaller operation, which you may or may not like. Performance on test torrents was not up to the Superior clients.

Miro

Finally, if you plan to be torrenting media files, Miro may be the client for you. It has the capability to run a wide range of media files and remembers where you, the user, were up to in watching/listening to your media files. In the software centre Miro received a 3/5 star rating with dissatisfied reviewers citing bugs and advertisements as the reason for their dissatisfaction.

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