Novell Strips BitTorrent DHT Technology from openSUSE
Written by Ernesto on November 22, 2009The Pirate Bay’s tracker closure has spurred several discussions about DHT, BitTorrent’s fallback technology for when central trackers are unavailable. According to some, DHT has some problems of its own. Novell, for example, decided to ship openSUSE with the BitTorrent client Transmission, but not before stripping DHT support.
Sponsored by Novell, openSUSE is a free and Open Source operating system, based on Linux. Following in the footsteps of Ubuntu, OpenSUSE recently decided to include Transmission as the default BitTorrent client.
However, the addition of Transmission to openSUSE was not straightforward. Since Transmission comes with DHT support – a technology that helps BitTorrent users to find peers – Novell thought that the application could possibly make openSUSE liable for copyright infringement under German law.
In order to avoid legal problems, Novell and openSUSE therefore decided to ship the operating system with a DHT-less version of Transmission while they tried to work out a solution with their lawyer.
“This month’s new release of their openSUSE Linux distro now ships with Transmission as the default BitTorrent client, but with DHT support removed at compile-time due to perceived German legal risks,” Transmission developer Charles Kerr told TorrentFreak.
After discussion with Novell’s German lawyer, it was agreed to include Transmission with DHT in future releases, but with an added popup informing users that they should only use the BitTorrent client for legal transfers. This means that the next openSUSE release will include a fully-functional BitTorrent client.
Charles Kerr told TorrentFreak that he is happy with the outcome, especially since Transmission will also add support for Magnet links in their upcoming 1.8 release.
“Magnet links are much more useful when DHT is available, so I’m glad it will be included in the next openSUSE release,” he said, adding that openSUSE have been very helpful and communicative, which is why there’s a better resolution in the works for the next openSUSE release.
Still, one can’t help but wonder if Novell had legitimate concerns, or was maybe a little paranoid in handling the DHT issue. That said, if BitTorrent indeed comes to rely more on trackerless torrents and DHT in the future, could BitTorrent clients potentially become a target for the entertainment industry?
Previously: Lady Gaga Earns Slightly More From Spotify Than Piracy
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98 Responses
That would be funny if the ent industry tried to go after the bt clients.
uTorrent is better under WINE anyway for Linux, so who cares.
rTorrent > * for unix :)
suse is horrid
arch or slack or you might as well be running osx
What about deluge?
I don’t think novell is against DHT anyway, it’s going to be popular you like it or not.
that is funny going after the OS company for what end users do. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHA
why would you be doing multimedia on suse? fedora is better suited (remember to pimp fedora). while transmission is ok, give ktorrent a try.
Novell = The Microsoft-wannabe in Linux world.
openSUSE is also too bloated for me. Ubuntu rox.
And I prefer Deluge above Transmission. Deluge is a more advanced BT-cliënt :)
Wine + µTorrent
tanks for word on deluge. i’m down wit it
@John
>he still uses windows apps in *nix
@6: Did you even read the damn article? They removed it as a precaution and it will be back in future versions.
I can understand why they did it, but I think that they were a little too paranoid.
http://trac.transmissionbt.com/attachment/ticket/2579/0001-Make-logging-message-more-informative.patch
I’ve been using Wine + µTorrent + Ubuntu for a long time, no problems. What’s your point awfulwaffle? Are you a l33t kiddie?
You must be stupid to use an emulator to emulate Bittorrent protocol in *nix. There are a lot of alternatives. If you don’t have a graphical environment the best clients: rtorrent or ctorrent or aria2 otherwise my best: Deluge or Transmission or Bittornado or KTorrent or Vuze or write your own torrent client with a few lines of code with Rasterbar’s libtorrent library.
And I don’t understand why this distributions including Transmission instead Deluge. Transmission downloading very very slowly. Deluge is more reliable and user friendly. I prefer Deluge too.
Sorry if it doesn’t meet with your approval awfulwaffle, but I also use uTorrent on Wine in openSUSE 11.2, for many reasons.
We only have to wait 8 months until the next openSUSE release, and maybe openSUSE will upgrade Transmission before that. I might try it again.
Ernesto,
In the last few days, it seems that you are thinking the Bittorrent is coming to an end because of the shutting down of TPB trackers. I think you worried too much.
First of all, tracker itself is abusolutely legal. If you set up and standalone trackers on internet, nobody can shut it down whatever it is used by legal or illegal downloaders.
Secondly, there are lot of countries on this world, thye just give a shit to MPAA. For example, lot of European country, China, Hongkong etc, they can not care less about MPAA and its whatsoever copyright or copyleft.
As I predicted before, even ISOHUNT,TPB,MININOVA were shutdown completely today, tomorrow, there will be more torrent sites step up and take the role.
To be honest, I am waiting for these big three to be shutdown, so I can setup my own torrentsites.
Of course, if these sites will be alright, I will just watching, crawlering torrent files and save them on my home computers. The day they were all be shutdown, that is the day my sites will go and replace them.
Bittorrent, forever!
Bad on stripping the client but made up for it by adding it back. Sounds like this was just adv. for the openSuse but not that it was a bad thing or anything b/c had I not have heard of it, I wouldn’t be wanting to try it out soon.
If they would go after clients, that would be foot in mouth since they did officially work with Bittorrent and showed their movies on bittorrent.com . That would not be however something that they have not done in the past though as for they targeted Winny which won (not liable but the Mafiaa appealed), Edonkey2000 through in the towel (no longer available my ass), They hijacked shearaza.com (sp?) and placed a fake client/scam client on the page, Kazaa & how they corrupted the hash codes and practically ruined the network & sued the creator, etc.
But to go after clients would be stupid on their part since they would only have to show that the cartel worked with the official and promoted it itself. How can you attack something that you promoted? Hopefully everyone would see the stupidity in that and just boycot them more if they tried. Sue Bram Cohen for bittorrent after working with him. What jackasses the mafia is.
http://www.startpage.com protect your privacy, search securely online, anonymously, and with privacy with startpage
In the KDE version they removed DHT too, but you can turn DHT on accesing KTorrent by web interface = D
I’d like to comment on the issue of the entertainment industry going after the clients.
There is no reason to be concerned about this. For one people hack clients to give functionality when its missing anyways. Take uTorrent for example that disallows DHT on private torrents, there are hacks to make DHT work.
You can’t stop software from being made. Especially in the world today where Open source, collaborative, applications are being the main source of applications.
@onur
I like to wear only one shoe, my underwear on the outside of my clothes, and my shirts on backwards and inside out, does that affect you? People just prefer some things over others. Don’t be such a HATER! (caps for emphasis)
@Novell: Oh Novell, dose the word whore says anything to you ?
I expect to see the same lawyers demanding a popup each time i use http technology so that i should be aware that i’m not supposed to do something nasty with this dangerous technology
Novell’s still around? Haven’t heard anything out of that camp in years. I though they gave up the ghost eons ago.
And as a webhost, I would be amazed if the German authorities would do anything over there concerning copyright. Some of the worst scrapers and hosts that violate international copyright are German based. keymachine and netdirect, I’m looking at you guys.
Just my stupid opinion, but if they go after the clients, they should go after the operating systems also, since they allow the clients to be run on your system.
Novell still around? Thought they would have died ages ago.
I’d like to see them attack few lines of code.
Sounds like ignorance, frankly. The legality of torrents depends on what you are sharing, not how you found the people you are sharing with.
Much ado about nothing. Why are those people still using linux when they:
1. run wine+utorrent
2. disable by default
3. whine when Novell strips DHT
I’ve word for each one of ‘em
1. run windows, utorrent will run better. no hopes from u guys.
2. enable it dude, how much time it takes to tick a checkbox
3. compile it yourself. This is what happens when corporates (Novell) enter the ‘free’ world.
Some people will never understand. It’s a “free” software.
@3 rTorrent > net-p2p/* for unix :) YES
@5 tf has always been partial to this excellent client.
bit torrent is dead…let the n00bs scavenge it’s rotting carcass, like laughing hyenas.
It is I who laugh loudest. I am there, where you wanna be…but you you have no idea where I am.
When you eventually find this place. the camp fire will have gone out again.
You are n00bs.
@pLEki
I can tell you where your head is! Yes, be the little l33t kiddie that won’t share his toys with us ‘noobs’. We don’t care!
@vyvyan
See my post above directed to onur. I don’t have a very high speed connection due to phone companies crap equipment in my ‘hood, so wine+uTorrent works just fine for me (regularly max out my pipe). I have DHT enabled as well as PEX. I don’t use opensuse so no issues for me. I use *nix because its more secure that winblows, plus it will run indefinitely without having to reboot periodically as with winblows. Again same response to you, don’t be a hater!
linux users must try Deluge!
Hi,
There are so many people worried about tracker being token down.
Can I get some donation if I am going to setup a standalone tracker?
The overall cost of a tracker is around 200 USD.
I have the source code( C++), I just neeed someone to provide some fund to keep it running.
If you can provide more money, we can setup a clusters. Let us say, 12 to 24 trackers all over the world.
“openSUSE is also too bloated for me. Ubuntu rox.”
lolwat :/
It is GNU/Linux.
-and I’m using debian (|^_^|)
#29
All file sharing is illegal according to the Hollyweed folks.
How about newsgroups and IRC?
Want to lock em up also?
Damn Nazis……
Get a grip dude………
This whole file sharing thing is very, very dangerous……..
I don’t know anyone that will pay 50 bucks to go see a movie if they can’t tell if it’s worth it.
Copyright…..the golden seal of bs
Folks need to take a look at what is really going on here.
@30 Wine Drinker/User
You’re not getting the point, it’s not about network connection speed. And native *nix client will perform better (read secure, low memory fingerprint, robust, lower chances IO problem, lower chances of connection problem etc.) compared to windows software emulated using wine.
FYI, I also use wine once in a while for decoding monkey’s audio.
@gnusay:
gentoo here.
Doesn’t matter. DHT-featured versions of the two default BT clients (Transmission for GNOME, KTorrent for KDE) is available via SUSE’s own Build Service.
With DHT:
http://packman.links2linux.org/package/transmission
http://packman.links2linux.org/package/ktorrent
Anyone running uT on linux with Wine must be living under a rock. Deluge and Tixati kick the crap out of uT and all the other Windows junk, and neither one needs Wine.
@vyvyan (#37)
Cool. I’m not using ‘Microsoft Related Products’, at all, for more than 2 years! and…
I love the free world :D
WWW: We Will Win!
GNU/Linux(s) + PC(s) FOR ALL!!!
No Government, No Police!
Free Education, Free World!
Free Food, No Money!
see me on: http://identi.ca/gnusay
Ehh. well its newsworthy I suppose but Suse sucks.
Deb. or Ubuntu for those of us who are not so command line literate lol…
J.
What’s wrong with wine?
oh and remember…
Wine
Is
Not an
Emulator
But yes open source is better if available :)
This decision by OpenSuSe was made like 3 months ago…..
#41 is retarded. No government and no police means the redneck with a shotgun who likes your house and thinks your girlfriend looks sexy shoots you, takes over your house, and rapes your girlfriend until somebody else who thinks your girlfriend looks sexy shows up with a bigger gun, and repeats the process. Maybe you died quickly, but your girlfriend won’t be so lucky.
get source code compile it yourself if you know how that is. thats the beauty of open source no one can stop you from getting that source code and using it not even the maffia.
Why use white + whatever if there are good linux clients. Ktorrent works pretty good.
(Shakes head, walks away sadly)
Sounds like the same logic that the Aussie Government used to stop binge drinking! Put a tax on bottled pre-mix drinks like Bourbon & Coke but not on the constituents. So it’s cheaper to buy a bottle of Bourbon and top it up with coke yourself. Great work guys.
To summarise: This will piss people off, screw over the “genuine users” of this technology and it does nothing to solve the “issue”.
(Comes back for one last try)
From the wiki on WINE…
I have not experienced any of the problems, issues you mentioned vyvyan, so for now I will stick with what “I” prefer thank you. Like #47 jack said not all of us are command line literate. I’m learning *nix now, so I may change clients later.
@Brent
If I had an internet rock I would throw it at you!
@ Wine Drinker/User
The argument isn’t against Wine per se, but against using it to copy functionality already available. Yes, if you’re running some X Win program that has no Linux port/clone then Wine is the way to go, but torrenting ain’t that X. A couple of years ago it was OK, when the graphical *NIX client we’re nowhere near to the functionality of CLI clients, but nowadays it ain’t so. uT did have several improvements compared to the earlier GUI clients,but most of the things that uT provides (on the GUI side, not used technologies) ought to be available on every other major *NIX client.
If you’re really into uT’s GUI get your hands on Transmission Remote GUI, it’s a standalone uT inspired graphical front to communicate with transmission-daemon.
Now, I proudly announce that I have indexed 1,000,000 torrents from mininova.org. So, you guys do not need to worry about what if mininova.org is going to be shutdown. My crawlers are still working hard to get the rest of torrents from mininova.org. I believe there are still 300,000 ~ 400,000 to go. But most of them should be dead torrent files anyway.
These torrent files are safely stored on my home computer. They are not in the public domain, so my activity is absolutely legal.
Thank you Borderliner, your the first person who hasn’t just outright dissed me. I have used Transmission but didn’t care for the interface. I’ll take a look at the Remote GUI interface, I was not aware of it, thanks for the info. So many ass hats when we have bigger fish to fry!
Ubuntu Fedora and OpenSuSE are Waaaaay too bloated for me. I run Crunchbang, and yes, I use transmission as my torrent client. It’s minimalistic and it just rocks.
If you like open source but like uTorrent’s GUI, Deluge is another awesome choice.
Suse & Transmission are teh suck anyway.
Deluge ftw!
#46 wtf are you talking about?
“could BitTorrent clients potentially become a target for the entertainment industry?”
….why not just ban the internet, because that can be used to infringe copyright too.
@15
dammit
Wine.Is.Not.An.Emulator!
Now read the first capital letter in each word in the above statement.
except “an” :P
DHT is stripped from opensuse since years.. from other clients
see https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=205390
Transmission is light, simple, and the application itself is fast, but the network [BitTorrent] performance has always been disappointingly slow.
Deluge is great. It is a bit of a resource hog, and sometimes gets cranky and doesn’t want to start up, but I found transfers to be much faster than they ever were in Transmission.
RTorrent is pretty awesome if you’re not put off by CLIs and text-file configuration. It’s tiny and quick, modest on resources, and configurable out the wazoo.
uTorrent still rocks as well as it does on Windows, though it might occasionally get a bit tipsy on the Wine.
KTorrent — if you’re already a KDE user or you don’t mind dragging in the “Kitchen SinK” as a dependency — is probably one of the nicer GUI BitTorrent clients out there for *nix. You can search, download, and preview torrents from within one program, which is convenient.
There. Did I leave anything out?
(P.S.: Arch Linux for the win. :])
@ Wine Drinker/User
My dissing, as you put it, is not anything personal against you. There is a big and a small picture. The small picture clears when you answer the question, “Why should one use wine?” The answer is “in absence of native *nix application which could provide the same functionality and ease of use.” I think this small picture is clear.
So what’s the big picture? The philosophy behind ‘free, as in freedom’ software. I would not tell you anymore about this, ‘coz it’s best to understand a philosophy at your own pace with time and experience.
In so far bt clients are concerned, deluge is arguably the best full featured and easy to use bt client on *nix systems. I would highly recommend it to users who have switched from windows environment.
After you’re at home with unix-like systems and you’ll find your own favorite native *nix app for [insert anything here].
Again ridiculous. You might aswell strip http since you can asume a lot of rapidshare users are downloading “illegal” content. They get overexited with internet, but technology like gun and missles they won’t be stripping ofcours.
Novell has had (or still) sort of agreements with microsoft to collaborate and such. All in secret of cours (still?).
Anyway just use ubuntu or fedora. Or even better archlinux/debian/slackware/gentoo …
cheers
Hitler is well alive and laughing a lot, dht sucks anyway…
Linux blows anyway.
Use Ubuntu.
Looks like Novell’s german lawyer is padding up his CV to get that juicy MAFIAA job as ThinkPig General.
Time to say, “Verpiss dich, junge!”
well, why do they include any software at all then… you can brake some law, by using a texteditor to copy a text from somebody else and put your own name as author etc.
oh ja, running xubuntu here… with transmission, i have no compaints about it
linux rocks!
Who cares?
Any P2P user is going to try several clients and choose the one that works best for him.
Choice is what Linux is about.
Right I’m upping the ante on Hollywood now. Too much paranoia and dishonesty being disseminated these days.
Here’s your solution, Hollywood!
1. Forget DVD/BlueRay sales. I know this one is hard to swallow, but bear with me here.
2. Improve movie theatres worldwide with the best screen sizes, awesome sounds, comfy seats, reasonably priced and nice food.
3. Increase the price of a ticket marginally, and provide a copy of the movie on DVD or BluRay.
4. All filesharing remains legal.
Problem solved. Now get outta here.
Paranoid Mormons?
Mother of twelve bastards.
@17 Nov 22, 2009 at 23:32 by bittorrent forever
“As I predicted before, even ISOHUNT,TPB,MININOVA were shutdown completely today, tomorrow, there will be more torrent sites step up and take the role.
To be honest, I am waiting for these big three to be shutdown, so I can setup my own torrentsites.”
Why wait? For new torrents we don’t need torrent sites anymore. What we need are magnet link hosting sites. The torrent stays on your PC.
As has been pointed out a magnet link can be published anywhere even in an email, forum sig or post such as this one.
magnet:?xt=urn:btih:HFHPPEPUOYCFWJSJWFJEVVZS4VZLPIMK
TCP/IP facilitates “piracy”,
why don’t the nazi-Germans outlaw that ??
@gnusay
free food. no money wtf man??? are you a stone age idiot who thinks that a whatever service doesn’t needs time&money
just get your shit together, dht still has a lot to work on.
Slackware ftw! ;)
Wow, I never thought I would see the day that would happen. Wonder what got into them to do that??
Jessi
http://www.ultimate-privacy.br.tc
K, this is starting to get annoying, every time some news comes out about opensuse people start going off on novell rants.1. Unless you can claim that you have contributed to the development of opensource projects as much as novell has, you should not complain. 2. Opensuse and Suse (SLED) are not the same distributions, one you have to buy from novell, the other is made by a community of developers – whom many of which are employed by novell -, its like brandy and cognac Suse is Opensuse, but Opensuse is Not Suse. 3. According to distrowatch’s top ranking distro’s atm Ubuntu is #1, Fedora is #2, and in third is Opensuse, wich proves it is far more popular than some ubuntu users realize. As for bittorrent clients, in opensuse you go to the “software repositories” option in yast, select add, then select “community repositories”; the packman repository has a bunch of different bittorrent clients, and if that is too diffucult for some people just download vuze (wich does more than everything) extract the archives and click on “azureus” and select “run”, soo easy. Deluge is great too althou I have not used it in some time, their are more bittorrent clients coming out in linux than I can name. O, and nothing against ubuntu; I will never use it thou, when their are ubuntu mods out their such as ultimate edition, and stoners edition wich make the stock ubuntu look dull. I’m currently trying to get on top of Arch, and that will be the only other distro for the moment that I concern myself with cause I want to see what source-based distro’s will look like.
Doesn’t really matter, you just have to install a version with DHT.
Amusing article lmao.
People who use uTorrent and WINE should go back to windows
If TFA is correct, I’m glad i’m using Ubuntu. Consider SUSE stripped from my list. :)
@52
Hell, yea. I def cosign on the use of Transmission Remote with the Transmission (Clutch) Web UI.
I normally use either or but since finding out that Opera Mini 5 Beta has rendering problems with my phone in utorrent because of some characters. Never had that problem with transmission, plus it’s so cool to SSH from your phone back into your Linux box and control everything from scripts and commandline.
@80
Why are you hating on Ubuntu? You act like it’s only ubuntu users that hate openSUSE quite a couple of users hate that OS. Good Luck with Arch tho, I hear that’s a helluva lot of work but it’s worth it.
@Suse Lover
“1. Unless you can claim that you have contributed to the development of opensource projects as much as novell has, you should not complain.”
This is bullshit, i hate these dont-complain-make-it-yourself-instead attitude. As a matter of fact, Suse is a good distro that i never recommend to anyone, because i dont trust novell anymore. This DHT issue just make the things worse.
@anonymous #13: Best patch ever :D
Those legal issues can drive anyone crazy. As soon as lawyers get into the business you get loads of crap to be done in order to realize a simple small thing since there seems to be an issue with almost any human activity.
@42 is right.
Filesharing is the Revolution!
the re will be always gcc, to recompile packages in with own options, otherwise suse wouldn’t be GNU/Linux
OpenSUSE ftw!
Why would anyone use Suse anyway? Sure it was fun pirating their old Pro disc sets but now I see very little use for Novel on a personal desktop. I hope they decide to include some feature that reports all who use bittorrent to the copyright-SS in their next release so that people see they need to switch distro.
Quote:
“..could BitTorrent clients potentially become a target for the entertainment industry?”
Who cares? By the time the industry has attempted any real threat to DHT, we, the bit-torrent community, would have moved on to a new methodology. A new hive.
With OpenSUSE, or opensource, or closedsource.. These are examples of the kinds of issues you can expect from corporate sponsored software.
Decide what YOU want to use:
” http://distrowatch.com “
Xubuntu + KTorrent FTW
You can still compile Transmission manually from tarball…
Hack the planet!
@an0n (#45)
Yes, but the news are (“new” is) that Novell actually implemented that decision this month release.
This is a non-issue, Deluge, which has Mainline DHT support, is already available through software.opensuse.com and within a couple of days it will be in the Packman repository.
(Packman is the major 3rd-party repo for OpenSUSE which any user who has installed the multimedia stuff will have enabled)
Please, DO NOT Publish
@TF
decoding problem at ‘8 references to this post’
? ????????? ??????? openSUSE ? BitTorrent ?????? ?????? ????????? DHT | PC TECH NEWS – ??????? ?????????? ????
http://pc-technews.ru/2009/v-sleduyushhem-vypuske-opensuse-v-bittorrent-klient-vernut-podderzhku-dht/
@ #6
That’d be the start of a few interesting court cases though. MPAA going after Microsoft cause MSIE allows you to download illegal files.
11 references to this post
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