The free, multi-platform Transmission BitTorrent client continues to increase in popularity and is considered by many to be a fast and lightweight piece of software.
The open source client runs on various operating systems with the notable exception of Windows, and according to the developers was designed to offer functionality without bloat. It is now the default BitTorrent client on Ubuntu.
Windows users who favor uTorrent as their BitTorrent client have had the ability to control their torrents from a webUI (web user interface) for some time now. The webUI for Transmission is known as ‘Clutch‘. This additional software makes it easy to monitor and control torrent transfers remotely, from any web browser connected to the Internet, anywhere in the world.
Previously, Transmission and Clutch had to be obtained separately but with the arrival of new Transmission releases (v1.30 and v1.31), that has changed.
‘Gimp’, a Clutch developer explains: “We are pleased to announce the Clutch project has now merged with Transmission. There will be no more releases of Clutch on its own, from 1.30 onwards it is bundled inside Transmission. You can still download Clutch 0.4 from the clutchbt.com website if you need clutch for an older version of Transmission, however that release is no longer supported.”
The latest version of transmission now runs the JSON-RPC protocol. This protocol makes it possible for other applications, even windows based clients, to interact with the transmission backend. Other additions and improvements to the latest Transmission versions include:
– Ability to add and remove tracker addresses
– Ability to create .torrent files with multiple tracker URLs
– Support for HTTP/FTP seeding
Clutch can be enabled by finding the ‘Remote’ tab in the ‘Preferences’ section.
Finally, here is ‘Gimp’ again with a call out to the community: “Although it has merged [with Transmission], Clutch is still a very new project, and thus there are still a few bugs and a lot of features missing. This message is also an open call for people to test Clutch all they can, and please, please submit patches and improvements! Right now clutch does not have a developer with enough time to push it forward to the place we all want it at, so anyone with the experience, and time, is welcome to help out.”
Gimp can be contacted on the Clutch forums.
