6 ms·

µTorrent gets a lot of praise, and for all I know rightly so, but I am curious about the advantages of µTorrent on Mac over Transmission. Glancing at the featur

by tdavis 18y ago

µTorrent gets a lot of praise, and for all I know rightly so, but I am curious about the advantages of µTorrent on Mac over Transmission. Glancing at the feature list, it seems like they're pretty equivalent.

nickb 18y ago
To me, a big plus is UI. I just love µTorrent UI. If you have few torrents in Transmission, the window gets huge. µTorrent's window doesn't grow as Transmission's.
- wesley 18y ago
  Err, you can disable the auto grow setting in transmission if that's what you are talking about?..
tlrobinson 18y ago
µTorrent on Windows was leaps and bounds faster than other Windows clients (at least it was a couple years ago when I tested them). I'm not sure if the same is true for the Mac version, but if so I'm looking forward to switching to µTorrent.
- kqr2 18y ago
  For speed, you can run rtorrent which is just a command line client. It also has a lot of nice options which may not be available in a gui. http://libtorrent.rakshasa.no/rtorrent/rtorrent.1.html http://libtorrent.rakshasa.no/rtorrent/rtorrent.1.html http://rtorrent.darwinports.com/ http://rtorrent.darwinports.com/
  - Zev 18y ago
    uTorrent is using 1% cpu and 14MB ram here on my MBP. rTorrent is using about the same on my server.
  - est 18y ago
    In fact the fastest HTTP/BT/ed2k download agent on this planet is Thunder(aka Gigaget), which is built on a hybrid P2SP network. Someone may consider it leeching, though.
  - kaens 18y ago
    I'm so glad I found rtorrent. I had just started learning my way around (n)curses to implement basically the same client interface, in python. Instead, I'm looking at rtorrent's implementation, in my free time, and working on other things. Saved myself a lot of time trying to do something I probably would have done rather poorly.
  - blasdel 18y ago
    I absolutely love rtorrent, I've used it for 3 years! I occasionally see crashes in extremely long-lived processes, but I've had it run for 6months+ with a week+ of CPU time used.
mattmaroon 18y ago
uTorrent has awesome RSS functionality built in. I seem to remember Transmission's being nonexistent. Plus I just generally liked the UI much better. I had both running side by side at one point.
- unalone 18y ago
  How does RSS help torrents?
  - moxy 18y ago
    I would imagine that one could use the RSS feed directly from utorrent either to automatically download torrents, or to choose torrents to download based on the incoming feed.
    - mattmaroon 18y ago
      Yep.
  - mattmaroon 18y ago
    I download all of the TV I watch that way. Tvrss.net is great.
- avinashv 18y ago
  I prefer Transmission's UI for 1, 2 or 3 torrents, but any more than that and the window becomes cluttered. uTorrent is unparalleled in number-of-torrents to memory-footprint ratio (at least, in Windows).
  - mattmaroon 18y ago
    Does transmission let you prioritize files within torrents? I don't remember it doing that, and I love that feature in uTorrent.
    - rms 18y ago
rufo 18y ago
In my personal tests, uTorrent running in Crossover on my Mac gets about 25%-50% higher transfer speeds than Transmission, and connects to peers faster.
- moxy 18y ago
  Hm. A sample size of one.
  - jwilliams 18y ago
    What did you expect, a double blind test published in a peer reviewed journal?
  - d0mine 18y ago
    It reminds me: the phrase direct observation sounds so much better than anecdotal evidence. </quote> http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=283746 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=283746
- pistoriusp 18y ago
  I concur with your experience.
- arthurk 18y ago
  I just tried it myself and uTorrent does give me better transfer speeds than Transmission (~80kb/s vs. ~60kb/s). It's not much and I tend to like Transmission more because it's Open Source but I wonder why there is such a difference.
tdavis 18y ago
Very interesting; thanks for the thoughts, everyone. I will check out the Mac version.
blasdel 18y ago
DHT support is a huge reason, plus µTorrent's bandwidth-maximising logic is the best available. It makes a massive difference on large public trackers that are highly overloaded and unresponsive. You'll start downloading a lot quicker, and use much more bandwidth; because you can find more peers quicker, and make much better use of them. The best implementations available are µTorrent, rTorrent, and Azureus, all with different strong suits. I exclusively use rTorrent in GNU Screen, but I don't download much from large public trackers.

by tdavis 18y ago

nickb 18y ago

To me, a big plus is UI. I just love µTorrent UI. If you have few torrents in Transmission, the window gets huge. µTorrent's window doesn't grow as Transmission's.

wesley 18y ago
Err, you can disable the auto grow setting in transmission if that's what you are talking about?..

tlrobinson 18y ago

µTorrent on Windows was leaps and bounds faster than other Windows clients (at least it was a couple years ago when I tested them). I'm not sure if the same is true for the Mac version, but if so I'm looking forward to switching to µTorrent.

kqr2 18y ago
For speed, you can run rtorrent which is just a command line client. It also has a lot of nice options which may not be available in a gui. http://libtorrent.rakshasa.no/rtorrent/rtorrent.1.html http://libtorrent.rakshasa.no/rtorrent/rtorrent.1.html http://rtorrent.darwinports.com/ http://rtorrent.darwinports.com/
- Zev 18y ago
  uTorrent is using 1% cpu and 14MB ram here on my MBP. rTorrent is using about the same on my server.
- est 18y ago
  In fact the fastest HTTP/BT/ed2k download agent on this planet is Thunder(aka Gigaget), which is built on a hybrid P2SP network. Someone may consider it leeching, though.
- kaens 18y ago
  I'm so glad I found rtorrent. I had just started learning my way around (n)curses to implement basically the same client interface, in python. Instead, I'm looking at rtorrent's implementation, in my free time, and working on other things. Saved myself a lot of time trying to do something I probably would have done rather poorly.
- blasdel 18y ago
  I absolutely love rtorrent, I've used it for 3 years! I occasionally see crashes in extremely long-lived processes, but I've had it run for 6months+ with a week+ of CPU time used.

mattmaroon 18y ago

uTorrent has awesome RSS functionality built in. I seem to remember Transmission's being nonexistent. Plus I just generally liked the UI much better. I had both running side by side at one point.

unalone 18y ago
How does RSS help torrents?
- moxy 18y ago
  I would imagine that one could use the RSS feed directly from utorrent either to automatically download torrents, or to choose torrents to download based on the incoming feed.
  - mattmaroon 18y ago
    Yep.
- mattmaroon 18y ago
  I download all of the TV I watch that way. Tvrss.net is great.
avinashv 18y ago
I prefer Transmission's UI for 1, 2 or 3 torrents, but any more than that and the window becomes cluttered. uTorrent is unparalleled in number-of-torrents to memory-footprint ratio (at least, in Windows).
- mattmaroon 18y ago
  Does transmission let you prioritize files within torrents? I don't remember it doing that, and I love that feature in uTorrent.
  - rms 18y ago

rufo 18y ago

In my personal tests, uTorrent running in Crossover on my Mac gets about 25%-50% higher transfer speeds than Transmission, and connects to peers faster.

moxy 18y ago
Hm. A sample size of one.
- jwilliams 18y ago
  What did you expect, a double blind test published in a peer reviewed journal?
- d0mine 18y ago
  It reminds me: the phrase direct observation sounds so much better than anecdotal evidence. </quote> http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=283746 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=283746
pistoriusp 18y ago
I concur with your experience.
arthurk 18y ago
I just tried it myself and uTorrent does give me better transfer speeds than Transmission (~80kb/s vs. ~60kb/s). It's not much and I tend to like Transmission more because it's Open Source but I wonder why there is such a difference.

tdavis 18y ago

Very interesting; thanks for the thoughts, everyone. I will check out the Mac version.

blasdel 18y ago

DHT support is a huge reason, plus µTorrent's bandwidth-maximising logic is the best available. It makes a massive difference on large public trackers that are highly overloaded and unresponsive. You'll start downloading a lot quicker, and use much more bandwidth; because you can find more peers quicker, and make much better use of them. The best implementations available are µTorrent, rTorrent, and Azureus, all with different strong suits. I exclusively use rTorrent in GNU Screen, but I don't download much from large public trackers.