16 ms·

Transmission v4.0

335 points by sweetp 4y ago

JeremyBanks 4y ago
[dead]
graton 4y ago
I kind of thought the project was dead with how long it went without a release. I ended up switching to qBittorrent about 8 months ago as I needed v2 torrent support. So far I have been very satisfied with the switch.
- BuckyBeaver 4y ago
  Every time I try a new Transmission release, I remember why I deleted it last time: NO PROXY SUPPORT. Ridiculous.
  - WirelessGigabit 4y ago
    Docker & VPN all the way.
    - BuckyBeaver 4y ago
      [dead]
- Belphemur 4y ago
  I was a long time user of transmission, but when I redid my *arr setup I devided to go to qbittorrent. qBittorrent can handle way more simultaneous connections and torrents than transmission. It doesn't slow down, it supports tags, categories and even custom UI (vue-qbittorrent is awesome). I'm not going back, especially when you have great docker images with WireGuard integrated in them.
  - petodo 4y ago
    so you say there is no benefit for me to switch from qbit to transmission for ocassional torrent download? I seed only during download or very shortly after and at max I download 10-15 torrents
    - Belphemur 4y ago
      I don't think there is any benefit in switching, no. You can even set proper limits in qbittorrent for your workflow to stop the seeding after X minutes.
  - Method-X 4y ago
    From the download page: > The macOS version is not well supported, because we don't have active macOS developers/contributors. My hopes were dashed :(
    - stronglikedan 4y ago
      Now you know how Windows users have felt for the past decade!
- HNAbusesUsers 4y ago
  Transmission is a no-go because it lacks proxy support, which is absurd.
wpietri 4y ago
> The entire codebase has been migrated from C to C++. In the process, we've removed thousands of lines of custom code and used standard C++ tools instead. The core's code has shrunk by 18%. The core codebase has been extensively refactored to be more testable and maintainable. I love negative-LOC commits! They warm my heart. As do the people who take the time to make them.
- tincholio 4y ago
  At my previous job, we re-did some Java stream processing stuff in Clojure. We added functionality, made it more stable and dropped 6K lines of code (out of 18K for that particular component) in the process. It felt like magic...
  - capableweb 4y ago
    That's not a fair comparison, rewriting anything in any lisp will dramatically reduce the amount of cruft, both lines of code and complexity.
    - kaba0 4y ago
      Doubt. Plus, essential complexity is non-reducible.
      - capableweb 4y ago
        Essential complexity I agree, you cannot get rid of (hence the whole "essential" part). However, when you program, lots of non-essential complexity sneaks in. If you've only ever written code in one language, I bet you wouldn't even be able to notice what is essential vs non-essential.
    - argiopetech 4y ago
      It is still a LOC reduction produced via rewrite. I don't think we should hold it against them that they choose a great target language for the rewrite...
    - 4y ago
xwowsersx 4y ago
I don't remember why or how I ever picked up uTorrent, but that's the client I've always used. Thinking about torrenting just now, I realize I used to download torrents much more often than I do these days. I guess that's due to greater availability of video content on the streaming platforms and music on Spotify, etc.? What else do people use torrents for from a consumer perspective? Is there a wider everyday use case that I'm unaware of? Genuinely curious.
- 2143 4y ago
  Well, it can be used to transfer any large files amongst a bunch of people. I like the protocol in theory. If n people want the same resource, it seems better if they get that in a sort of distributed way rather than all of them connecting to a central server to get that resource. Can be useful if you're on a slow network. I wonder if existing routers along the way make this efficient regardless. Some Linux distros nudge you towards torrents to download its .iso file even if direct download methods are available. Xubuntu is one such distro [1]. Also, can anybody from Germany confirm if there's a ban on torrenting over there? I hear some governments/ISPs etc are starting to blanket-ban the entire protocol to prevent proliferation of pirated movies, which seems to be what the protocol is used for in practice. [1] https://xubuntu.org/download/ https://xubuntu.org/download/
  - Gigachad 4y ago
    These days it’s much more practical to just upload it to cloud storage and share a link. Sure in theory it’s not the absolute fastest way but it’s massively more convenient and regular users aren’t sharing 1TB files.
    - jszymborski 4y ago
      The bandwidth isn't much fun to pay for though.
      - Gigachad 4y ago
        No consumer cloud storage charges you for transfers.
omginternets 4y ago
Man, this is a throwback. Nice to see the project is still alive. Does it support thin client setups? I might have to get the ol’ seed box going again.
- nvllsvm 4y ago
  Yup - there's a built-in web UI and a number of native desktop clients (Tremotesf is a good one).
- UncleEntity 4y ago
  I have it setup in on a vps in foreign lands and ssh forward the web control port to use it without having to worry about opening up ports on the server to get the script kiddies interested.
zaphirplane 4y ago
[flagged]
arkadiyt 4y ago
For whatever reason the ARM version of Transmission does not work well on my M2 laptop - it downloads quickly at first and then drops off to zero, and had some other bugs (the x86 version always worked flawlessly). I tried playing around with different settings, running their nightly builds, etc, and nothing fixed it for me. In the end I searched for other clients and found them all filled with ads and bloatware, and decided to use this excellent open source command line client instead: https://github.com/anacrolix/torrent https://github.com/anacrolix/torrent It has a few frontends built on top of it (linked in the project readme), but I just run `torrent download <magnet link>` and it downloads at full speed / with no issues.
- capableweb 4y ago
  After uTorrent went south, I started using qBittorent on all platforms and haven't looked back since. Found it better than any alternative, might want to give it a try if you want client+ui in one package: https://www.qbittorrent.org/ https://www.qbittorrent.org/
  - arkadiyt 4y ago
    I wanted to evaluate it in the past but their downloads page has a giant warning, "The macOS version is not well supported", so I didn't bother downloading it.
    - eatbitseveryday 4y ago
      I am actively trying to use it on macOS/M1 and it does have bugs. Random crashes every few days, UI crawling (doing anything, right click, whatever) with more than 20 torrents, etc.
    - dt2m 4y ago
      The GUI is buggy to say the least, but the actual torrent transfers are faster in every step of the way compared to Transmission 3.x in my testing.
- stevenrj 4y ago
1letterunixname 4y ago
< 3.0 was pretty stable. Does the -daemon server still randomly crash and corrupt/forget its downloads? Because 3.x on Linux beyond toy uses doesn't work so well. Obligatory: "And why not rewrite network-facing processes in Rust to ensure memory safety and fewer CVE risks?"
meatjuice 4y ago
Why not rewritten in rust? (someone had to do this)
- npigrounet 4y ago
  [dead]
- catfishx 4y ago
  Rust evangelist strikeforce strikes again... No seriously, I am a rustacean too, but please stop telling everyone to Rewrite everything in Rust (even if its only a joke), its becoming slightly annoying
  - ksec 4y ago
    >its becoming slightly annoying Its becoming ? Its been annoying since Day 1.
  - znpy 4y ago
    > its becoming slightly annoying Tbh it’s been always annoying
- ZoomZoomZoom 4y ago
  Actually, not such a bad question, if worded poorly. There's at least Synapse[1]. It even has a third-part broker to accept transmission GUIs by Drew DeVault[2]. Why didn't they just reuse Transmission protocol from the get-go, to leverage the great Transmission-Remote-GUI[3] for example, is beyond me. Unfortunately, there's just not enough interest in the project and no adoption. Transmission, at least previously, never have been too resource-friendly, so a lean and mean Rust alternative would be great. 1. https://github.com/Luminarys/synapse https://github.com/Luminarys/synapse 2. https://sr.ht/~sircmpwn/broca/ https://sr.ht/~sircmpwn/broca/ 3. https://github.com/transmission-remote-gui/transgui https://github.com/transmission-remote-gui/transgui
shpx 4y ago
I'll be honest, I'm glad people are working on this again but the most important change for me would be fixing this minor UI issue: https://github.com/transmission/transmission/issues/261 https://github.com/transmission/transmission/issues/261
- vladharbuz 4y ago
  Send a PR?
  - gouggoug 4y ago
    GP might not be a software engineer and even if they were they might not be in a position to submit a PR.
- capableweb 4y ago
  At a glance, it seems like a issue Apple needs to fix. What could the developers do to fix it here?
  - Gigachad 4y ago
    Put some padding on the UI. I had a quick look and I couldn’t find any app that had UI in the space the scroll bar shows in. Apple is clearly never changing this as they and every other app developer puts a 10px padding in and it looks better while not having a scroll bar obscure anything.
    - capableweb 4y ago
      > Put some padding on the UI. I had a quick look and I couldn’t find any app that had UI in the space the scroll bar shows in. What about Xcode? According to the PR where they tried to solve it (https://github.com/transmission/transmission/pull/1 https://github.com/transmission/transmission/pull/1), it seems it suffers from the same problem.
      - shpx 4y ago
KronisLV 4y ago
On Windows I've used Tixati previously, because it doesn't do ads and has a rather pleasant UI: https://tixati.com/ https://tixati.com/ On Linux, however, Transmission is great! Actually, Transmission also runs on Windows, so if the simpler UI is enough for you, then it's also a great choice across multiple platforms.
eatbitseveryday 4y ago
> Newly-added seeds can start immediately and verify pieces on demand, instead of needing a full verify before seeding can begin. This is a huge annoyance for me with torrent clients. Files that are 80GB or larger take days to verify before they can seed. Having this feature (which makes sense to do) is a more sane way to do it.
- Avamander 4y ago
  Days? I don't think even my 2nd gen RPi hashes files that slow.
  - BonoboIO 4y ago
    Never have seen that long hashing even on low power devices.
npigrounet 4y ago
[dead]
ralusek 4y ago
I stopped torrenting some time ago, but what are people's experience with webtorrent? https://webtorrent.io/ https://webtorrent.io/ I'd just as soon avoid running additional software if possible.
0x64 4y ago
I have a major soft spot for Transmission, congrats!
HNAbusesUsers 4y ago
Still no proxy support, so still no dice.
- hot_gril 4y ago
  Yep, I need to make sure my ISP doesn't figure out that I'm torrenting Ubuntu.
kccqzy 4y ago
From the release notes: > The entire codebase has been migrated from C to C++. In the process, we've removed thousands of lines of custom code and used standard C++ tools instead. The core's code has shrunk by 18%. The core codebase has been extensively refactored to be more testable and maintainable. From the user perspective I don't particularly care (although I've been using it for more than a decade) but it excites the inner developer in me.
- runnerup 4y ago
  GPL licensed so it seems relevant. For closed-source apps I wouldn't think these need to be in the release notes but for FLOSS apps, many "users" are developers.
- CharlesW 4y ago
  Nice! "Transmission now uses Sonarcloud, Coverity, LGTM, and clang-tidy static analysis on new code. Several hundred code warnings have been fixed compared to Transmission 3.00."
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
yesco 4y ago
Release Notes: https://github.com/transmission/transmission/releases/tag/4.0.0 https://github.com/transmission/transmission/releases/tag/4....
DemiGuru 4y ago
Finally... j/k I'm glad to see that it's still being actively worked on. The now previous version has appeared to be languishing for a long time now.
calvinmorrison 4y ago
> Transmission is a great bittorrent client, but last time I checked they purposely didn't want to support sequential downloads, which is useful for media streaming, so I'll stick with qBittorrent. I hate ideologically driven coding decisions
- CharlesW 4y ago
  It's not anymore. See https://github.com/transmission/transmission/issues/597 https://github.com/transmission/transmission/issues/597, tagged "pr welcome".
  - calvinmorrison 4y ago
    sure... the code fix has been around for over 15 years at this point. Its even in their old tracker wiki Replace: /* otherwise go with our random seed / return tr_compareUint16( a->random, b->random ); With: / otherwise download the pieces in order */ return tr_compareUint16( a->piece, b->piece );
    - CharlesW 4y ago
      Surprisingly trivial. Hopefully, someone who cares about this will contribute!
      - calvinmorrison 4y ago
        Its been contributed for a decade. And rejected for as long. I myself just have a patched version running. Yay for open source I guess
- lern_too_spel 4y ago
  The nutty thing is that BitTorrent is set up to handle this. If you don't like peers that download sequentially, deprioritize serving those peers.
- KennyBlanken 4y ago
  There's a long history of antisocial-behavior-prevention stuff in peer to peer sharing applications. Overall they're usually a good thing. I'm with them on this. Sequential downloading leads to a bias in what pieces are available. If you're not sequentially downloading, you're contributing evenly back to the swarm. If you sequential-download, you're not...and you're potentially leaving the stream much sooner (if you don't finish watching etc.)
sidpatil 4y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34703478 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34703478
mkl95 4y ago
One of my favourite pieces of software. Simple and stable
tonetheman 4y ago
I cannot find it on the main site but this software was at one time scriptable. We used to use it to distribute really large files around to tons of machines using the scripting. It worked really well.
revskill 4y ago
On the Mac, this is the only working bittorrent client for me. The uTorrent client moved to the web is simply broken.
- horsawlarway 4y ago
  I use both transmission and deluge. Personally - I happen to like deluge more, but they both work fine. https://deluge-torrent.org/ https://deluge-torrent.org/
  - davidjytang 4y ago
    Could you share the reason you like deluge?
    - horsawlarway 4y ago
      Based on LibTorrent, Lots of features, easy customization, web UI is consistent and stable, API is easy enough to work with. Plus it generally works everywhere I need it to - as a GUI app (across all major OSes), a web app, or a terminal app. So I can just dump it on whatever machine I'm using without having to think very hard. Transmission is also fine, but it kinda felt like it was stalled out for a bit - missing features, some ui bugs, not much movement around it. So I switched to Deluge and haven't really had a reason to move anywhere else.
- par 4y ago
  the uTorrent client on web feels like straight up malware (which it probably is.)
  - eastbound 4y ago
    uTorrent desktop used to mine bitcoins. Which is a pretty good deal for a free product.
- Reason077 4y ago
  qBitTorrent (https://www.qbittorrent.org https://www.qbittorrent.org) works great on Mac.
KennyBlanken 4y ago
> Support for using BitTorrent v2 torrents and hybrid torrents This is a big deal. The FOSS world has been unable to switch to hybrid or v2 torrents for years, entirely because Transmission would completely break if handed an v2 or hybrid file and the developers declined to address it. libtorrent supported v2 roughly three years ago.
haunter 4y ago
I use it but I don't like how the app language = system language, you can't change it >It's not technically challenging to add a drop-down list of languages to the UI, as least for the Qt client, but I'm still not convinced it'll be used by a lot of people. https://github.com/transmission/transmission/issues/1152 https://github.com/transmission/transmission/issues/1152
- smcl 4y ago
  Oof yeah that's a faux pas. Apps also frequently use the wrong setting and try to set their language using location rather than the user's selected language. So on Windows VLC for me is in Czech since that's where I chose my location (for the correct time), even though my UI language + kb layout is US English. Quite a few apps make this mistake :-/
- mrtksn 4y ago
  On MacOS you can set specific language for each app from the system settings, so It should be possible to set Transmission's language too.
- newaccount74 4y ago
  Almost all Mac apps work this way. All apps use the global language and region settings. It would be against platform conventions to override the system settings, and in my opinion it's a waste of developer time to add such a setting in the app (especially because that popup needs to be tested, maintained, localized....). If you really want the app to use a different language than the system, you can just override the user default per app: defaults write org.m0k.transmission AppleLanguages '(de_at)'
  - galad87 4y ago
    It's possible to select a preferred language for each app in System Preferences / System Settings since macOS 10.15 (or 10.14? anyway since some years ago).
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
retrocryptid 4y ago
Transmission on Ubuntu has been so hopelessly booked for so long... maybe in a couple years when they upgrade to thr 4.0 code base, it'll be okay. Happy to hear people are working on this.
youstolemybits 4y ago
[flagged]
- AdamJacobMuller 4y ago
  Why do you assume that? I only use transmission to download my Linux ISOs.
- jobs_throwaway 4y ago
  But the evidence tells us that piracy increases purchases, not deters them. So it seems that by censoring bittorent clients, we're harming those who make a living selling their intellectual property.
- jabroni_salad 4y ago
  Do you write similar screeds for HTTP and CD-RW? I've committed piracy with both of those in the past as well. As a sysadmin I have used bittorrent many times to ship legitimate bits over subgrade connections. Hard to think of a more durable and reliable protocol and it absolutely has a place on HN despite it being the favored tool of pirates.
robertwt7 4y ago
how does this differ from qbittorrent?
- yborg 4y ago
  It looks like a Mac app on macOS instead of a relic of Windows XP. (I use qbittorrent as well, it performs well and would work with some trackers that didn't play nice with Transmission 3).
- tjex 4y ago
  it works (but seriously, I had so many issues with qbittorrent. probably because of being on m1 mac). It's also much more simplified / basic.
elcapitan 4y ago
The app told me that there was an update available. I clicked on install, it downloaded an 8MB binary, installed and restarted it within a few seconds. After years of apps which update twice a week by downloading half a GB and then waste my time by grabbing focus multiple times in a row while restarting (hello Signal), this was the best update experience I can remember in a long time.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
stevemk14ebr 4y ago
no linuxserver docker image yet unfortunately
jxf 4y ago
Transmission is like if UNIX CLI design was applied to product interfaces: do one thing (okay, it does a few things) and do it well.
minton 4y ago
Honest question. What kinds of things are people using torrents for in 2023?
- jayroh 4y ago
  Prrrrrretty sure it's the same thing they were using torrents for 10 years ago.
- nocoolnametom 4y ago
  With the insane proliferation of streaming services... lots and lots of Linux distro installation ISOs.
- SSLy 4y ago
  Stuff that's not on streaming services
- nucivorous 4y ago
  Huh, sharing files?
- bobleeswagger 4y ago
  Owning their media.
the_unknown 4y ago
On an Intel Mac Mini I've got 4.0 Beta 2 installed the Check Updates doesn't detect anything and on the website there is only an Apple-based Mac option listed. Did they drop Intel support or is that coming later? Or does it matter and it is really a universal package with a poor name choice (and failed update check)?
squarefoot 4y ago
Related: the Transmission Remote GUI that allows to control the client from elsewhere. I use it with the Transmission client contained in the XigmaNAS NAS software which I run headless. https://github.com/transmission-remote-gui/transgui https://github.com/transmission-remote-gui/transgui
- addandsubtract 4y ago
  The release notes say, "The remote control GUIs (transmission-qt and transmission-web) now use the RPC API "table" mode, resulting in smaller payloads / less bandwidth use.", but the GUI hasn't been updated in 3+ years, so what is this referring to?
  - squarefoot 4y ago
    It probably refers to the official remote gui which is not the one I linked. Mine works because I'm connecting to the transmission daemon shipped with XigmaNAS, an older version since it updates with the NAS firmware, which currently is the latest stable one, yet over 1 year old.
leokennis 4y ago
Transmission is free, free of bloat, and it works well. Cannot ask for more.

335 points by sweetp 4y ago

[dead]

I kind of thought the project was dead with how long it went without a release. I ended up switching to qBittorrent about 8 months ago as I needed v2 torrent support. So far I have been very satisfied with the switch.

BuckyBeaver 4y ago
Every time I try a new Transmission release, I remember why I deleted it last time: NO PROXY SUPPORT. Ridiculous.
- WirelessGigabit 4y ago
  Docker & VPN all the way.
  - BuckyBeaver 4y ago
    [dead]
Belphemur 4y ago
I was a long time user of transmission, but when I redid my *arr setup I devided to go to qbittorrent. qBittorrent can handle way more simultaneous connections and torrents than transmission. It doesn't slow down, it supports tags, categories and even custom UI (vue-qbittorrent is awesome). I'm not going back, especially when you have great docker images with WireGuard integrated in them.
- petodo 4y ago
  so you say there is no benefit for me to switch from qbit to transmission for ocassional torrent download? I seed only during download or very shortly after and at max I download 10-15 torrents
  - Belphemur 4y ago
    I don't think there is any benefit in switching, no. You can even set proper limits in qbittorrent for your workflow to stop the seeding after X minutes.
- Method-X 4y ago
  From the download page: > The macOS version is not well supported, because we don't have active macOS developers/contributors. My hopes were dashed :(
  - stronglikedan 4y ago
    Now you know how Windows users have felt for the past decade!
HNAbusesUsers 4y ago
Transmission is a no-go because it lacks proxy support, which is absurd.

wpietri 4y ago

> The entire codebase has been migrated from C to C++. In the process, we've removed thousands of lines of custom code and used standard C++ tools instead. The core's code has shrunk by 18%. The core codebase has been extensively refactored to be more testable and maintainable. I love negative-LOC commits! They warm my heart. As do the people who take the time to make them.

tincholio 4y ago
At my previous job, we re-did some Java stream processing stuff in Clojure. We added functionality, made it more stable and dropped 6K lines of code (out of 18K for that particular component) in the process. It felt like magic...
- capableweb 4y ago
  That's not a fair comparison, rewriting anything in any lisp will dramatically reduce the amount of cruft, both lines of code and complexity.
  - kaba0 4y ago
    Doubt. Plus, essential complexity is non-reducible.
    - capableweb 4y ago
      Essential complexity I agree, you cannot get rid of (hence the whole "essential" part). However, when you program, lots of non-essential complexity sneaks in. If you've only ever written code in one language, I bet you wouldn't even be able to notice what is essential vs non-essential.
  - argiopetech 4y ago
    It is still a LOC reduction produced via rewrite. I don't think we should hold it against them that they choose a great target language for the rewrite...
  - 4y ago

xwowsersx 4y ago

I don't remember why or how I ever picked up uTorrent, but that's the client I've always used. Thinking about torrenting just now, I realize I used to download torrents much more often than I do these days. I guess that's due to greater availability of video content on the streaming platforms and music on Spotify, etc.? What else do people use torrents for from a consumer perspective? Is there a wider everyday use case that I'm unaware of? Genuinely curious.

2143 4y ago
Well, it can be used to transfer any large files amongst a bunch of people. I like the protocol in theory. If n people want the same resource, it seems better if they get that in a sort of distributed way rather than all of them connecting to a central server to get that resource. Can be useful if you're on a slow network. I wonder if existing routers along the way make this efficient regardless. Some Linux distros nudge you towards torrents to download its .iso file even if direct download methods are available. Xubuntu is one such distro [1]. Also, can anybody from Germany confirm if there's a ban on torrenting over there? I hear some governments/ISPs etc are starting to blanket-ban the entire protocol to prevent proliferation of pirated movies, which seems to be what the protocol is used for in practice. [1] https://xubuntu.org/download/ https://xubuntu.org/download/
- Gigachad 4y ago
  These days it’s much more practical to just upload it to cloud storage and share a link. Sure in theory it’s not the absolute fastest way but it’s massively more convenient and regular users aren’t sharing 1TB files.
  - jszymborski 4y ago
    The bandwidth isn't much fun to pay for though.
    - Gigachad 4y ago
      No consumer cloud storage charges you for transfers.

omginternets 4y ago

Man, this is a throwback. Nice to see the project is still alive. Does it support thin client setups? I might have to get the ol’ seed box going again.

nvllsvm 4y ago
Yup - there's a built-in web UI and a number of native desktop clients (Tremotesf is a good one).
UncleEntity 4y ago
I have it setup in on a vps in foreign lands and ssh forward the web control port to use it without having to worry about opening up ports on the server to get the script kiddies interested.

zaphirplane 4y ago

[flagged]

arkadiyt 4y ago

For whatever reason the ARM version of Transmission does not work well on my M2 laptop - it downloads quickly at first and then drops off to zero, and had some other bugs (the x86 version always worked flawlessly). I tried playing around with different settings, running their nightly builds, etc, and nothing fixed it for me. In the end I searched for other clients and found them all filled with ads and bloatware, and decided to use this excellent open source command line client instead: https://github.com/anacrolix/torrent https://github.com/anacrolix/torrent It has a few frontends built on top of it (linked in the project readme), but I just run `torrent download <magnet link>` and it downloads at full speed / with no issues.

capableweb 4y ago
After uTorrent went south, I started using qBittorent on all platforms and haven't looked back since. Found it better than any alternative, might want to give it a try if you want client+ui in one package: https://www.qbittorrent.org/ https://www.qbittorrent.org/
- arkadiyt 4y ago
  I wanted to evaluate it in the past but their downloads page has a giant warning, "The macOS version is not well supported", so I didn't bother downloading it.
  - eatbitseveryday 4y ago
    I am actively trying to use it on macOS/M1 and it does have bugs. Random crashes every few days, UI crawling (doing anything, right click, whatever) with more than 20 torrents, etc.
  - dt2m 4y ago
    The GUI is buggy to say the least, but the actual torrent transfers are faster in every step of the way compared to Transmission 3.x in my testing.
stevenrj 4y ago

1letterunixname 4y ago

< 3.0 was pretty stable. Does the -daemon server still randomly crash and corrupt/forget its downloads? Because 3.x on Linux beyond toy uses doesn't work so well. Obligatory: "And why not rewrite network-facing processes in Rust to ensure memory safety and fewer CVE risks?"

meatjuice 4y ago

Why not rewritten in rust? (someone had to do this)

npigrounet 4y ago
[dead]
catfishx 4y ago
Rust evangelist strikeforce strikes again... No seriously, I am a rustacean too, but please stop telling everyone to Rewrite everything in Rust (even if its only a joke), its becoming slightly annoying
- ksec 4y ago
  >its becoming slightly annoying Its becoming ? Its been annoying since Day 1.
- znpy 4y ago
  > its becoming slightly annoying Tbh it’s been always annoying
ZoomZoomZoom 4y ago
Actually, not such a bad question, if worded poorly. There's at least Synapse[1]. It even has a third-part broker to accept transmission GUIs by Drew DeVault[2]. Why didn't they just reuse Transmission protocol from the get-go, to leverage the great Transmission-Remote-GUI[3] for example, is beyond me. Unfortunately, there's just not enough interest in the project and no adoption. Transmission, at least previously, never have been too resource-friendly, so a lean and mean Rust alternative would be great. 1. https://github.com/Luminarys/synapse https://github.com/Luminarys/synapse 2. https://sr.ht/~sircmpwn/broca/ https://sr.ht/~sircmpwn/broca/ 3. https://github.com/transmission-remote-gui/transgui https://github.com/transmission-remote-gui/transgui

shpx 4y ago

I'll be honest, I'm glad people are working on this again but the most important change for me would be fixing this minor UI issue: https://github.com/transmission/transmission/issues/261 https://github.com/transmission/transmission/issues/261

vladharbuz 4y ago
Send a PR?
- gouggoug 4y ago
  GP might not be a software engineer and even if they were they might not be in a position to submit a PR.
capableweb 4y ago
At a glance, it seems like a issue Apple needs to fix. What could the developers do to fix it here?
- Gigachad 4y ago
  Put some padding on the UI. I had a quick look and I couldn’t find any app that had UI in the space the scroll bar shows in. Apple is clearly never changing this as they and every other app developer puts a 10px padding in and it looks better while not having a scroll bar obscure anything.
  - capableweb 4y ago
    > Put some padding on the UI. I had a quick look and I couldn’t find any app that had UI in the space the scroll bar shows in. What about Xcode? According to the PR where they tried to solve it (https://github.com/transmission/transmission/pull/1 https://github.com/transmission/transmission/pull/1), it seems it suffers from the same problem.
    - shpx 4y ago

KronisLV 4y ago

On Windows I've used Tixati previously, because it doesn't do ads and has a rather pleasant UI: https://tixati.com/ https://tixati.com/ On Linux, however, Transmission is great! Actually, Transmission also runs on Windows, so if the simpler UI is enough for you, then it's also a great choice across multiple platforms.

eatbitseveryday 4y ago

> Newly-added seeds can start immediately and verify pieces on demand, instead of needing a full verify before seeding can begin. This is a huge annoyance for me with torrent clients. Files that are 80GB or larger take days to verify before they can seed. Having this feature (which makes sense to do) is a more sane way to do it.

Avamander 4y ago
Days? I don't think even my 2nd gen RPi hashes files that slow.
- BonoboIO 4y ago
  Never have seen that long hashing even on low power devices.

npigrounet 4y ago

[dead]

ralusek 4y ago

I stopped torrenting some time ago, but what are people's experience with webtorrent? https://webtorrent.io/ https://webtorrent.io/ I'd just as soon avoid running additional software if possible.

0x64 4y ago

I have a major soft spot for Transmission, congrats!

HNAbusesUsers 4y ago

Still no proxy support, so still no dice.

hot_gril 4y ago
Yep, I need to make sure my ISP doesn't figure out that I'm torrenting Ubuntu.

kccqzy 4y ago

From the release notes: > The entire codebase has been migrated from C to C++. In the process, we've removed thousands of lines of custom code and used standard C++ tools instead. The core's code has shrunk by 18%. The core codebase has been extensively refactored to be more testable and maintainable. From the user perspective I don't particularly care (although I've been using it for more than a decade) but it excites the inner developer in me.

runnerup 4y ago
GPL licensed so it seems relevant. For closed-source apps I wouldn't think these need to be in the release notes but for FLOSS apps, many "users" are developers.
CharlesW 4y ago
Nice! "Transmission now uses Sonarcloud, Coverity, LGTM, and clang-tidy static analysis on new code. Several hundred code warnings have been fixed compared to Transmission 3.00."
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yesco 4y ago

Release Notes: https://github.com/transmission/transmission/releases/tag/4.0.0 https://github.com/transmission/transmission/releases/tag/4....

DemiGuru 4y ago

Finally... j/k I'm glad to see that it's still being actively worked on. The now previous version has appeared to be languishing for a long time now.

calvinmorrison 4y ago

> Transmission is a great bittorrent client, but last time I checked they purposely didn't want to support sequential downloads, which is useful for media streaming, so I'll stick with qBittorrent. I hate ideologically driven coding decisions

CharlesW 4y ago
It's not anymore. See https://github.com/transmission/transmission/issues/597 https://github.com/transmission/transmission/issues/597, tagged "pr welcome".
- calvinmorrison 4y ago
  sure... the code fix has been around for over 15 years at this point. Its even in their old tracker wiki Replace: /* otherwise go with our random seed / return tr_compareUint16( a->random, b->random ); With: / otherwise download the pieces in order */ return tr_compareUint16( a->piece, b->piece );
  - CharlesW 4y ago
    Surprisingly trivial. Hopefully, someone who cares about this will contribute!
    - calvinmorrison 4y ago
      Its been contributed for a decade. And rejected for as long. I myself just have a patched version running. Yay for open source I guess
lern_too_spel 4y ago
The nutty thing is that BitTorrent is set up to handle this. If you don't like peers that download sequentially, deprioritize serving those peers.
KennyBlanken 4y ago
There's a long history of antisocial-behavior-prevention stuff in peer to peer sharing applications. Overall they're usually a good thing. I'm with them on this. Sequential downloading leads to a bias in what pieces are available. If you're not sequentially downloading, you're contributing evenly back to the swarm. If you sequential-download, you're not...and you're potentially leaving the stream much sooner (if you don't finish watching etc.)

sidpatil 4y ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34703478 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34703478

mkl95 4y ago

One of my favourite pieces of software. Simple and stable

tonetheman 4y ago

I cannot find it on the main site but this software was at one time scriptable. We used to use it to distribute really large files around to tons of machines using the scripting. It worked really well.

revskill 4y ago

On the Mac, this is the only working bittorrent client for me. The uTorrent client moved to the web is simply broken.

horsawlarway 4y ago
I use both transmission and deluge. Personally - I happen to like deluge more, but they both work fine. https://deluge-torrent.org/ https://deluge-torrent.org/
- davidjytang 4y ago
  Could you share the reason you like deluge?
  - horsawlarway 4y ago
    Based on LibTorrent, Lots of features, easy customization, web UI is consistent and stable, API is easy enough to work with. Plus it generally works everywhere I need it to - as a GUI app (across all major OSes), a web app, or a terminal app. So I can just dump it on whatever machine I'm using without having to think very hard. Transmission is also fine, but it kinda felt like it was stalled out for a bit - missing features, some ui bugs, not much movement around it. So I switched to Deluge and haven't really had a reason to move anywhere else.
par 4y ago
the uTorrent client on web feels like straight up malware (which it probably is.)
- eastbound 4y ago
  uTorrent desktop used to mine bitcoins. Which is a pretty good deal for a free product.
Reason077 4y ago
qBitTorrent (https://www.qbittorrent.org https://www.qbittorrent.org) works great on Mac.

KennyBlanken 4y ago

> Support for using BitTorrent v2 torrents and hybrid torrents This is a big deal. The FOSS world has been unable to switch to hybrid or v2 torrents for years, entirely because Transmission would completely break if handed an v2 or hybrid file and the developers declined to address it. libtorrent supported v2 roughly three years ago.

haunter 4y ago

I use it but I don't like how the app language = system language, you can't change it >It's not technically challenging to add a drop-down list of languages to the UI, as least for the Qt client, but I'm still not convinced it'll be used by a lot of people. https://github.com/transmission/transmission/issues/1152 https://github.com/transmission/transmission/issues/1152

smcl 4y ago
Oof yeah that's a faux pas. Apps also frequently use the wrong setting and try to set their language using location rather than the user's selected language. So on Windows VLC for me is in Czech since that's where I chose my location (for the correct time), even though my UI language + kb layout is US English. Quite a few apps make this mistake :-/
mrtksn 4y ago
On MacOS you can set specific language for each app from the system settings, so It should be possible to set Transmission's language too.
newaccount74 4y ago
Almost all Mac apps work this way. All apps use the global language and region settings. It would be against platform conventions to override the system settings, and in my opinion it's a waste of developer time to add such a setting in the app (especially because that popup needs to be tested, maintained, localized....). If you really want the app to use a different language than the system, you can just override the user default per app: defaults write org.m0k.transmission AppleLanguages '(de_at)'
- galad87 4y ago
  It's possible to select a preferred language for each app in System Preferences / System Settings since macOS 10.15 (or 10.14? anyway since some years ago).
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retrocryptid 4y ago

Transmission on Ubuntu has been so hopelessly booked for so long... maybe in a couple years when they upgrade to thr 4.0 code base, it'll be okay. Happy to hear people are working on this.

youstolemybits 4y ago

[flagged]

AdamJacobMuller 4y ago
Why do you assume that? I only use transmission to download my Linux ISOs.
jobs_throwaway 4y ago
But the evidence tells us that piracy increases purchases, not deters them. So it seems that by censoring bittorent clients, we're harming those who make a living selling their intellectual property.
jabroni_salad 4y ago
Do you write similar screeds for HTTP and CD-RW? I've committed piracy with both of those in the past as well. As a sysadmin I have used bittorrent many times to ship legitimate bits over subgrade connections. Hard to think of a more durable and reliable protocol and it absolutely has a place on HN despite it being the favored tool of pirates.

robertwt7 4y ago

how does this differ from qbittorrent?

yborg 4y ago
It looks like a Mac app on macOS instead of a relic of Windows XP. (I use qbittorrent as well, it performs well and would work with some trackers that didn't play nice with Transmission 3).
tjex 4y ago
it works (but seriously, I had so many issues with qbittorrent. probably because of being on m1 mac). It's also much more simplified / basic.

elcapitan 4y ago

The app told me that there was an update available. I clicked on install, it downloaded an 8MB binary, installed and restarted it within a few seconds. After years of apps which update twice a week by downloading half a GB and then waste my time by grabbing focus multiple times in a row while restarting (hello Signal), this was the best update experience I can remember in a long time.

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stevemk14ebr 4y ago

no linuxserver docker image yet unfortunately

jxf 4y ago

Transmission is like if UNIX CLI design was applied to product interfaces: do one thing (okay, it does a few things) and do it well.

minton 4y ago

Honest question. What kinds of things are people using torrents for in 2023?

jayroh 4y ago
Prrrrrretty sure it's the same thing they were using torrents for 10 years ago.
nocoolnametom 4y ago
With the insane proliferation of streaming services... lots and lots of Linux distro installation ISOs.
SSLy 4y ago
Stuff that's not on streaming services
nucivorous 4y ago
Huh, sharing files?
bobleeswagger 4y ago
Owning their media.

the_unknown 4y ago

On an Intel Mac Mini I've got 4.0 Beta 2 installed the Check Updates doesn't detect anything and on the website there is only an Apple-based Mac option listed. Did they drop Intel support or is that coming later? Or does it matter and it is really a universal package with a poor name choice (and failed update check)?

squarefoot 4y ago

Related: the Transmission Remote GUI that allows to control the client from elsewhere. I use it with the Transmission client contained in the XigmaNAS NAS software which I run headless. https://github.com/transmission-remote-gui/transgui https://github.com/transmission-remote-gui/transgui

addandsubtract 4y ago
The release notes say, "The remote control GUIs (transmission-qt and transmission-web) now use the RPC API "table" mode, resulting in smaller payloads / less bandwidth use.", but the GUI hasn't been updated in 3+ years, so what is this referring to?
- squarefoot 4y ago
  It probably refers to the official remote gui which is not the one I linked. Mine works because I'm connecting to the transmission daemon shipped with XigmaNAS, an older version since it updates with the NAS firmware, which currently is the latest stable one, yet over 1 year old.

leokennis 4y ago

Transmission is free, free of bloat, and it works well. Cannot ask for more.