9 ms·

A plug for GPL/MIT Transmission (windows version http://trqtw.sf.net/ http://trqtw.sf.net/ ) If you want to avoid ads and bundled spyware, better to use up-to-

by mappu 12y ago

A plug for GPL/MIT Transmission (windows version http://trqtw.sf.net/ http://trqtw.sf.net/ ) If you want to avoid ads and bundled spyware, better to use up-to-date FOSS instead of years-old unsupported versions of uTorrent.

blfr 12y ago
Better yet, Transmission allows you to run the torrent client/daemon on a server and only GUI on your computer (there's even an Android app somewhere). Or you can just go with rTorrent, and control it over ssh. That way you use bandwidth where it's cheap and don't tax your, often battery-bound, local device.
- rmc 12y ago
  Or you can run a web gui on the server and connect to it's web interface
  - TazeTSchnitzel 12y ago
    Yes, transmission-daemon's web interface is the shit. Lets me use my VPS as a mini "seed box".
- icebraining 12y ago
  If you use rtorrent, check out Transdroid, it's a pretty nice Android frontend. The main advantage is that you can simply open a magnet link with it, and it'll automatically push it to rtorrent, instead of having to copy-paste between the app and your SSH client.
  - xrjn 12y ago
    I tried to set up Transdroid on multiple occasions, both with commercial seedboxes and ones that I've set up my self - to no avail every time. Right now I use instead Flud on my phone, Transmission on my laptop, and rtorrent on a DO droplet for when I want to quickly download something (and then stream it over ssh + cat + mplayer).
    - vivab0rg 12y ago
      That DO setup is really interesting. Care to elaborate?
      - xrjn 12y ago
        I install rtorrent on the droplet, and open the torrent (which I scp onto the box) or magnet. apt-get update apt-get install rtorrent rtorrent file.torrent // use ctr + q to quit Then I ssh user@host cat movie.mkv | mplayer - on my laptop. I use an existing droplet most of the time, however you could easily set up a new droplet each time with tugboat for example - you don't need to install anything extra or do any more setup after rtorrent for this to work. Although you should use .rtorrent.rc if you're going to be doing any serious torrenting, you can just get away with running rtorrent in screen if you want to seed for a bit. This works fine for most usage cases, however you can't go forwards/backwards in my experience, and the stream will fail if you experience network issues - you'll need to download the whole thing from your droplet to your local computer if that happens.
        c0wb0yc0d3r 12y ago
        How do you benefit from this over using a seedbox from a dedicated seedbox host? Is it just because you use droplets that you've already spun up and are using for other things?
        xrjn 12y ago
        The cheapest seedbox I've used that was usable was 10$ per month. You're definitely paying for the support and the time they put into making sure everything runs smoothly. With DO I already have droplets that are running well under capacity most time regardless, so there isn't any added cost. Also, if you want to just download a torrent, you can launch a droplet and delete it as soon as you're done - which will cost a couple of cents at most.
        icebraining 12y ago
        Regarding network issues, increasing the mplayer cache can help. I always increase -cache and -cache-min when I'm streaming.
aembleton 12y ago
Also Deluge is worth looking at: http://dev.deluge-torrent.org/wiki/Download http://dev.deluge-torrent.org/wiki/Download
- wasyl 12y ago
  I use Deluge and am very happy, I have been recommending it for non tech-savvy friends and they don't have problems with it, so that's nice (while installing uTorrent by them usually ended up with installing adware)
- omegaham 12y ago
  Deluge is fantastic.
- jszymborski 12y ago
  Deluge is great, especially since it's an option for Windows as well, but qBittorrent seems more stable to me and is cross-platform as well.
vitobcn 12y ago
qBittorrent ( http://www.qbittorrent.org/ http://www.qbittorrent.org/ ) is another popular free one available on most platforms.
- bgaluszka 12y ago
  I've been using it for few years now. It has 'Download in sequential order' which basically allows you to start watching video just after starting download.
  - broodbucket 12y ago
    This breaks the torrent model...but it's so damn convenient. There's quite a few torrent clients who refuse to implement this.
    - andrepd 12y ago
      Why does it break the torrent model? Does it rely on having a "randomized" block download order?
      - icebraining 12y ago
        https://wiki.vuze.com/w/Sequential_downloading_is_bad https://wiki.vuze.com/w/Sequential_downloading_is_bad
      - freehunter 12y ago
        The idea of a torrent is that if you're only missing the last 5mb of a 1GB file, that's all that gets downloaded. If you're downloading in sequential order, the last parts of the file are going to be less well-represented than the first parts. Not much of a problem if it's well-seeded, but they're not always well-seeded. Oh how many times have I tried to download a file where the most complete seeder only has 95% of the download because all the people who had finished dropped off.
      - jpgvm 12y ago
        To be fair I think this could be made better by integrating the media player buffer with the torrent client. While ever it's able to keep the media client fed it should also try either download random blocks or maybe more intelligently fetch the blocks with the least availability.
cfontes 12y ago
I've switched to Tixati because of that kind of thing.
heeen 12y ago
doesn't sourceforge bundle crapware with their installers as well?
- sp332 12y ago
  It appears to be opt-in (on the part of the uploader). http://sourceforge.net/blog/advertising-bundling-community-and-criticism/ http://sourceforge.net/blog/advertising-bundling-community-a...
  - u1F3B2 12y ago
    To be sure you can append "?nowrap" to the end of any SF download page so http://sourceforge.net/projects/trqtw/files/latest/download http://sourceforge.net/projects/trqtw/files/latest/download becomes http://sourceforge.net/projects/trqtw/files/latest/download?nowrap http://sourceforge.net/projects/trqtw/files/latest/download?...
jpalomaki 12y ago
Not always true, for example FileZilla installer (at least some of them) is bundled with adware: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=88499507 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=88499507
- morganvachon 12y ago
  This kind of thing is what makes it difficult for me to recommend open source software to my Windows using friends and clients. My sister was looking for an alternative to Paint Shop Pro for the simple graphics she does, and she didn't want to pay for the next version if she could get something free. Without thinking, I suggested Paint.net, as I've always enjoyed using it over The Gimp on Windows. She went to getpaint.net and, of course, ended up with nothing but adware because the guy behind Paint.net is a talented but very greedy individual[1]. I should have instead pointed her to ninite.com and told her to download Paint.net there. Now she won't trust Paint.net no matter where it comes from, which is a shame because for what she needed it was more than enough. That's only one of several cases where I've recommended a truly good, open source or freeware app for Windows, to have the person become angry with me for sending them on a spyware-laden wild goose chase. From now on I just offer to install the app they need for them, using ninite.com instead of the original source. And it shouldn't have to be that way. [1] http://forums.getpaint.net/index.php?/topic/23234-can-paintnet-be-considered-spyware/ http://forums.getpaint.net/index.php?/topic/23234-can-paintn...
  - pjc50 12y ago
    Yeah, this is kind of a disaster. The non-Windows FOSS communities actually function as communities, where if you try to do something like this you get blacklisted, and there's an expectation of doing it for the sake of contribution. Windows users do not constitute a "community". So if something's zero-financial-transaction-"free", it may still be bundled with exploitware and negative-added-value software.
  - adrianmalacoda 12y ago
    paint.net is not FOSS [1]. IIRC it used to be, but it was made proprietary at some point. [1] http://www.getpaint.net/license.html http://www.getpaint.net/license.html
Goronmon 12y ago
If you want to avoid ads and bundled spyware, better to use up-to-date FOSS instead of years-old unsupported versions of uTorrent. Why is it better to use up-to-date FOSS if the older version of uTorrent works fine (better even, in my experience)?
- UnoriginalGuy 12y ago
  https://torrentfreak.com/utorrent-177-stable-080127/ https://torrentfreak.com/utorrent-177-stable-080127/
  - ArchReaper 12y ago
    That article is 7 years old...
- balladeer 12y ago
  Because one day it might stop to; actually it "will".
  - ArchReaper 12y ago
    What makes you think that? The torrent protocol would need to fundamentally change to completely stop the older versions from working. I don't see that happening.
    - inyourtenement 12y ago
      The environment it runs in (your PC, operating system) changes over time. Yes, backwards compatibility is a big priority, but eventually something is going to fall out of compatibility. It's also known as bit rot.
  - maratd 12y ago
    And when it does, I can switch. For now, the older version of uTorrent works quite well and is RECOMMENDED by the trackers I use.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
drzaiusapelord 12y ago
Deluge works with Windows and has been popular for years. Its what I use. http://deluge-torrent.org/ http://deluge-torrent.org/
swinglock 12y ago
On Windows I like the quite light Halite client. http://www.binarynotions.com/halite-bittorrent-client/ http://www.binarynotions.com/halite-bittorrent-client/
Shorel 12y ago
Heretic! Deluge forever.
higherpurpose 12y ago
qBittorent is great. I started using it about 2 years ago not because I had an ideological problem with utorrent, but because it had much better performance on my laptop. For some reason utorrent would utilize 100 percent of my hard disk speed, and freeze my PC. I've tried Transmission (on Linux) and Deluge, but I prefer the more familiar and simpler interface of qBittorent. My only gripe with it is that in utorrent I could sort the torrent column by "last finished" or something like that. In qBittorent it's harder to find the last torrents that you downloaded, which can be annoying when you have a few dozen in the list.
lewisl9029 12y ago
I use Deluge at the moment. Last time I tried Transmission I remember there wasn't any official support for multiple watch folders. Is this still the case? If not, I'd like to give Transmission another try.

by mappu 12y ago

blfr 12y ago

Better yet, Transmission allows you to run the torrent client/daemon on a server and only GUI on your computer (there's even an Android app somewhere). Or you can just go with rTorrent, and control it over ssh. That way you use bandwidth where it's cheap and don't tax your, often battery-bound, local device.

rmc 12y ago
Or you can run a web gui on the server and connect to it's web interface
- TazeTSchnitzel 12y ago
  Yes, transmission-daemon's web interface is the shit. Lets me use my VPS as a mini "seed box".
icebraining 12y ago
If you use rtorrent, check out Transdroid, it's a pretty nice Android frontend. The main advantage is that you can simply open a magnet link with it, and it'll automatically push it to rtorrent, instead of having to copy-paste between the app and your SSH client.
- xrjn 12y ago
  I tried to set up Transdroid on multiple occasions, both with commercial seedboxes and ones that I've set up my self - to no avail every time. Right now I use instead Flud on my phone, Transmission on my laptop, and rtorrent on a DO droplet for when I want to quickly download something (and then stream it over ssh + cat + mplayer).
  - vivab0rg 12y ago
    That DO setup is really interesting. Care to elaborate?
    - xrjn 12y ago
      I install rtorrent on the droplet, and open the torrent (which I scp onto the box) or magnet. apt-get update apt-get install rtorrent rtorrent file.torrent // use ctr + q to quit Then I ssh user@host cat movie.mkv | mplayer - on my laptop. I use an existing droplet most of the time, however you could easily set up a new droplet each time with tugboat for example - you don't need to install anything extra or do any more setup after rtorrent for this to work. Although you should use .rtorrent.rc if you're going to be doing any serious torrenting, you can just get away with running rtorrent in screen if you want to seed for a bit. This works fine for most usage cases, however you can't go forwards/backwards in my experience, and the stream will fail if you experience network issues - you'll need to download the whole thing from your droplet to your local computer if that happens.
      - c0wb0yc0d3r 12y ago
        How do you benefit from this over using a seedbox from a dedicated seedbox host? Is it just because you use droplets that you've already spun up and are using for other things?
        xrjn 12y ago
        The cheapest seedbox I've used that was usable was 10$ per month. You're definitely paying for the support and the time they put into making sure everything runs smoothly. With DO I already have droplets that are running well under capacity most time regardless, so there isn't any added cost. Also, if you want to just download a torrent, you can launch a droplet and delete it as soon as you're done - which will cost a couple of cents at most.
      - icebraining 12y ago
        Regarding network issues, increasing the mplayer cache can help. I always increase -cache and -cache-min when I'm streaming.

aembleton 12y ago

Also Deluge is worth looking at: http://dev.deluge-torrent.org/wiki/Download http://dev.deluge-torrent.org/wiki/Download

wasyl 12y ago
I use Deluge and am very happy, I have been recommending it for non tech-savvy friends and they don't have problems with it, so that's nice (while installing uTorrent by them usually ended up with installing adware)
omegaham 12y ago
Deluge is fantastic.
jszymborski 12y ago
Deluge is great, especially since it's an option for Windows as well, but qBittorrent seems more stable to me and is cross-platform as well.

vitobcn 12y ago

qBittorrent ( http://www.qbittorrent.org/ http://www.qbittorrent.org/ ) is another popular free one available on most platforms.

bgaluszka 12y ago
I've been using it for few years now. It has 'Download in sequential order' which basically allows you to start watching video just after starting download.
- broodbucket 12y ago
  This breaks the torrent model...but it's so damn convenient. There's quite a few torrent clients who refuse to implement this.
  - andrepd 12y ago
    Why does it break the torrent model? Does it rely on having a "randomized" block download order?
    - icebraining 12y ago
      https://wiki.vuze.com/w/Sequential_downloading_is_bad https://wiki.vuze.com/w/Sequential_downloading_is_bad
    - freehunter 12y ago
      The idea of a torrent is that if you're only missing the last 5mb of a 1GB file, that's all that gets downloaded. If you're downloading in sequential order, the last parts of the file are going to be less well-represented than the first parts. Not much of a problem if it's well-seeded, but they're not always well-seeded. Oh how many times have I tried to download a file where the most complete seeder only has 95% of the download because all the people who had finished dropped off.
    - jpgvm 12y ago
      To be fair I think this could be made better by integrating the media player buffer with the torrent client. While ever it's able to keep the media client fed it should also try either download random blocks or maybe more intelligently fetch the blocks with the least availability.

cfontes 12y ago

I've switched to Tixati because of that kind of thing.

heeen 12y ago

doesn't sourceforge bundle crapware with their installers as well?

sp332 12y ago
It appears to be opt-in (on the part of the uploader). http://sourceforge.net/blog/advertising-bundling-community-and-criticism/ http://sourceforge.net/blog/advertising-bundling-community-a...
- u1F3B2 12y ago
  To be sure you can append "?nowrap" to the end of any SF download page so http://sourceforge.net/projects/trqtw/files/latest/download http://sourceforge.net/projects/trqtw/files/latest/download becomes http://sourceforge.net/projects/trqtw/files/latest/download?nowrap http://sourceforge.net/projects/trqtw/files/latest/download?...

jpalomaki 12y ago

Not always true, for example FileZilla installer (at least some of them) is bundled with adware: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=88499507 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=88499507

morganvachon 12y ago
This kind of thing is what makes it difficult for me to recommend open source software to my Windows using friends and clients. My sister was looking for an alternative to Paint Shop Pro for the simple graphics she does, and she didn't want to pay for the next version if she could get something free. Without thinking, I suggested Paint.net, as I've always enjoyed using it over The Gimp on Windows. She went to getpaint.net and, of course, ended up with nothing but adware because the guy behind Paint.net is a talented but very greedy individual[1]. I should have instead pointed her to ninite.com and told her to download Paint.net there. Now she won't trust Paint.net no matter where it comes from, which is a shame because for what she needed it was more than enough. That's only one of several cases where I've recommended a truly good, open source or freeware app for Windows, to have the person become angry with me for sending them on a spyware-laden wild goose chase. From now on I just offer to install the app they need for them, using ninite.com instead of the original source. And it shouldn't have to be that way. [1] http://forums.getpaint.net/index.php?/topic/23234-can-paintnet-be-considered-spyware/ http://forums.getpaint.net/index.php?/topic/23234-can-paintn...
- pjc50 12y ago
  Yeah, this is kind of a disaster. The non-Windows FOSS communities actually function as communities, where if you try to do something like this you get blacklisted, and there's an expectation of doing it for the sake of contribution. Windows users do not constitute a "community". So if something's zero-financial-transaction-"free", it may still be bundled with exploitware and negative-added-value software.
- adrianmalacoda 12y ago
  paint.net is not FOSS [1]. IIRC it used to be, but it was made proprietary at some point. [1] http://www.getpaint.net/license.html http://www.getpaint.net/license.html

Goronmon 12y ago

If you want to avoid ads and bundled spyware, better to use up-to-date FOSS instead of years-old unsupported versions of uTorrent. Why is it better to use up-to-date FOSS if the older version of uTorrent works fine (better even, in my experience)?

UnoriginalGuy 12y ago
https://torrentfreak.com/utorrent-177-stable-080127/ https://torrentfreak.com/utorrent-177-stable-080127/
- ArchReaper 12y ago
  That article is 7 years old...
balladeer 12y ago
Because one day it might stop to; actually it "will".
- ArchReaper 12y ago
  What makes you think that? The torrent protocol would need to fundamentally change to completely stop the older versions from working. I don't see that happening.
  - inyourtenement 12y ago
    The environment it runs in (your PC, operating system) changes over time. Yes, backwards compatibility is a big priority, but eventually something is going to fall out of compatibility. It's also known as bit rot.
- maratd 12y ago
  And when it does, I can switch. For now, the older version of uTorrent works quite well and is RECOMMENDED by the trackers I use.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

drzaiusapelord 12y ago

Deluge works with Windows and has been popular for years. Its what I use. http://deluge-torrent.org/ http://deluge-torrent.org/

swinglock 12y ago

On Windows I like the quite light Halite client. http://www.binarynotions.com/halite-bittorrent-client/ http://www.binarynotions.com/halite-bittorrent-client/

Shorel 12y ago

Heretic! Deluge forever.

higherpurpose 12y ago

qBittorent is great. I started using it about 2 years ago not because I had an ideological problem with utorrent, but because it had much better performance on my laptop. For some reason utorrent would utilize 100 percent of my hard disk speed, and freeze my PC. I've tried Transmission (on Linux) and Deluge, but I prefer the more familiar and simpler interface of qBittorent. My only gripe with it is that in utorrent I could sort the torrent column by "last finished" or something like that. In qBittorent it's harder to find the last torrents that you downloaded, which can be annoying when you have a few dozen in the list.

lewisl9029 12y ago

I use Deluge at the moment. Last time I tried Transmission I remember there wasn't any official support for multiple watch folders. Is this still the case? If not, I'd like to give Transmission another try.