rTorrent, going the CLI way…
I have been having a lot of problems with this laptop of mine as it is. I decided not to put it to much strain (afterall, even though it is HP who sucks, I am the one who suffers), so I dumped Azureus (still my favorite client read more here) and go for Deluge. After some time, I was not much impressed.
Deluge is built using python. So it is way faster than Azureus which is Java based1. Azureus, however comes with plenty of features. Almost overwhelming. Deluge on the other side, has very few features. I mean it doesn’t even display the hash of the torrent to search and add more trackers if needed. It does not display the pieces being downloaded, does not have any information about pieces at all.
Then I tried transmission. It is good and it is fast. Built using C. But it looks quite weird and general tendency of people is towards Deluge than transmission2. Even I found that out why, it is really weird indeed.
I had always preferred uTorrent back when I was using Windows and even though uTorrent runs smooth with wine, I have had problems with it. It always failed to resume downloads if the torrents were removed and added back, searched by hash. So I was not going back there.
So, I asked a few of my friends, and Harsh, recommended rTorrent to me3. I installed it and it is amazing. Runs on very low RAM. Has got great speeds. Has got almost all features that can be in a CLI based client.
I am constantly getting download speeds of 25kBps+ on a 256kbps line, which is very good since it is the most I could get out of uTorrent or Azureus. The only problem I have found so far is that it lacks the ability to queue the torrents. The feature, however, has been demanded by users and is scheduled to be integrated in the future releases.
LibTorrent is a BitTorrent library written in C++ for *nix, with a focus on high performance and good code. The library differentiates itself from other implementations by transferring directly from file pages to the network stack. On high-bandwidth connections it is able to seed at 3 times the speed of the official client.
rTorrent makes use of this library. The seeding speeds are very good, if not 3x. I am getting a ratio more than 1.00 for most of the times. So far so good. I am not switching from rTorrent anytime soon. It is good if you want performance. If you just want another client with lot of features AND a GUI. Then Azureus is the way to go.
Links :-
Posts in the series, Going the CLI Way :-
- I had a fried of mine argue with me over this. He says that java is faster, but it is the layers that make it slow… I wonder what that is. [↩]
- Comparing the 2. A review says that 7/11 people use Azureus. [↩]
- actually it was Mehul, but Mehul said that it was Harsh who recommended it to him [↩]
This entry was posted on Thursday, April 24th, 2008 at 4:29 pm and is filed under Article, Bit-Torrent, Console, Internet, Linux, Review, Software, System Configuration, Tools. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
(sorry Ashwin) 
QuizMasterAsh April 24th, 2008 at 8:24 pm
I dunno why people like Azures.. For me uTorrent is working superb both on Windows and Lin|_|x.. Azures is just too heavy on resources..rTorrebt lacks some of the essaintial features like Super Seeding, MultiPlateform (It cant run on windows), uTorent can run on linux using wine, It also lacks UPnP…. and Peer Exchange which both can increase Download Speed….
Just read this chart for uTorrent & Azures and rTorrent.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_BitTorrent_software
And you will see uTorrent has far great features,,, (The only problem it has is its not a FOSS)