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Transmission Becomes Default BitTorrent Client for Ubuntu

The popular cross-platform BitTorrent client Transmission, praised by its users for being full-featured but lightweight, is now officially the new default client for Ubuntu.

transmissionTransmission is already included in the 4th Alpha release of Hardy Heron, and is set to replace the Gnome BitTorrent client that Ubuntu has used up until now. A stable version of Ubuntu 8.04 is expected to be released in April 2008.

Transmission has gained a lot of popularity over the last year, and is considered to be one of the fastest and lightweight BitTorrent clients. It is an Open Source project, and the application is currently available on almost every operating system except Windows. Similar to uTorrent, it focuses on being lightweight, while including all the features a demanding BitTorrent user needs.

The Transmission team describes it as follows: “Transmission has been built from the ground up to be a lightweight, yet powerful BitTorrent client. Its simple, intuitive interface is designed to integrate tightly with whatever computing environment you choose to use. Transmission strikes a balance between providing useful functionality without feature bloat.”

Transmission uses little resources, and we’ve heard of people running it on their routers, NAS devices and even mobile phones. There is also a great WebUI for Transmission, called Clutch. With Clutch you can easily monitor and control your torrents remotely. Today, the Clutch team has released version 0.3, and instructions on how to get started are over here.

Downloads and more information about Ubuntu Hardy Heron can be found in the Ubuntu Wiki.

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  • Mister Name

    Awww, thought it would be uTorrent :p

  • wiki

    bad move. rtorrent would be my choice

  • Mister Name

    Isn’t it Clutch version 0.3 not 3.0

  • Hamster

    No DHT.

    Nice try, NEXT!

  • red dog

    nice article

  • tanel

    uTorrent && wine = SWEET! :)

  • Dan

    unfortunately, utorrent isn’t open source and only runs on Wine in Linux

  • JoeRodge

    pics or it didn’t happen

  • http://torrentfreak.com Ernesto

    [quote comment="276336"]pics or it didn’t happen[/quote]

    hah!

    it did happen

  • MacUser

    I wish they would add support for PG blocklists, as running PeerGuardian on the mac is a royal pain in the ass… The only mac client with blocklist support is Azureus, and it’s a horrible resource hog.

  • dragonfly

    i like deluge, its almost a clone of uTorrent.

  • Anonymous

    nothing beats utorrent + wine.

  • Crandom

    nothing beats utorrent + wine.

  • neko

    god at least its not old bittorrent client – been fighting hard for this for several releases

  • me

    Deluge should be the default client in gnome.

  • fidoda

    Yeah that’s a good news.
    The old bittorrent client that comes with earlier releases of Ubuntu was crap.

  • Anonymous

    I agree, Deluge is much better than Transmission.

  • Vincent Price

    AT least we have options and not just utorrent and azureus anymore.

  • Screw the options

    Stick with what works and is lightweight – uTorrent all the way.
    Transmission? PASS!

  • Dr.Arthur

    Transmission is very simple. It makes sense as a default torrent application. I hope it supports webseeded torrents. Without webseeding I’d have no way to seed my work.

  • x

    w00t w00t for transmission

  • Kevin Guertin

    Ah, man! I was hoping Deluge would become the default. At first glance, this client seems to be quite featureless. And why would I want to open a separate window to see the Details of the Torrent (like files, etc.)?? That’s just… odd.

  • HaloZero

    Tranmissions needs more features (or at like a Transmission+ with more features).

    Deluge crashes too much for my sake. uTorrent + wine

  • Jasper van Weerd

    No DHT… thats a good point

    And no windows support…

  • alohajayhawk

    Transmission is alright, I wish uTorrent would hurry up with mac OS support. Transmission is limited in fuctions, but still gets the job done.

  • Anonymous

    Utorrent no thanks,i will never use it again since the creator of utorrent have been sleeping with the enemy…Transmission is not bad but would like a blocklist in it.I agree that deluge crash all the time.

    I will stick to KTORRENT.

  • x

    transmission rules

  • fsh

    [quote comment="276509"]Utorrent no thanks,i will never use it again since the creator of utorrent have been sleeping with the enemy…Transmission is not bad but would like a blocklist in it.I agree that deluge crash all the time.

    I will stick to KTORRENT.[/quote]
    utorrent is only for windows morons we are talking about linux

  • xabbott

    I’ve been using Deluge as well. It’s come a long way. The ui is very close to utorrent.
    It has block list support via plugins. Really the plugins make it extensible or minimal as you need.
    But I understand why it’s not default for Ubuntu/Gnome. It’s still a young project.

  • obscur156

    Yes,i agree with you XABBOTT.
    Using utorrent is a nonsense under linux.Windows apps under linux pffff.

    I have made the swith to linux because i was sick of winblow$…
    Will be my first anniversary in febuary with ubuntu and very happy with it.

  • kornflake

    no where i d/l from allows dht so its ok to leave out infact its good for the noobs

    http://www.seedmore.org
    kornflake

  • Anonymous

    [quote comment="276386"]nothing beats utorrent + wine.[/quote]

    except for deluge.

  • Ice

    Utorrent rocks anyway and all others i don’t know.also Ubuntu is a stable linux flavor but utorrent should come out with a linux version too bcoz if this transmission if it is not having the DHT support then it sucks.

  • Vish

    Deluge is prepping up to be a good native Linux client. I have used transmission, didn’t find it too intuitive. It lacks the features

  • Julien

    [quote comment="276516"]utorrent is only for windows[/quote]You can use µtorrent under Linux with Wine…

    About Deluge, i tried it and it wasn’t stable… oO

    My choice would definitely go to Ktorrent, but Transmission is a good choice for those who don’t need many features.

  • obscur156

    Agreed with kornflake, dht should stay out of transmission and yes its good for noobs.

    I hope one day people will get over it with utorrent.Sorry fanboys.

    For me transmission is just missing ip blocklist,if it comes in a near futur,i will use it.

    KTORRENT for me right now but it can change.

  • chow

    I used Linux exclusively since about 2004. Mostly just used the X version of bittorrent and now ktorrent. Found transmission in the repo’s of my distro (pclinuxos) so I am going to give it a try. One of the difficulties I have had in trying to get windows users to try linux is the perception that linux is difficult to use. So even if a torrent client is lean on features but is easy to use. It is not an all together bad idea to include such an app as a default distro. Particularly one ideal for new linux users like ubuntu.

  • neeks

    My perception of Transmission, on OSX at least, is that it’s a pile of bug riddled crap. Sure, Azureus is heavy and OSX has pathetic Java support, but at least it gets the job done right.

  • harley

    Didn’t Transmission have a long-standing bug that cause it to corrupt data and endlessly request the same packets from trackers? Wasn’t Trasmission banned from a number of private trackers because of the drain that bug caused?

    That bug may be fixed now, but their quality control leaves much to be desired. I’ll stick with KTorrent.

  • ollie

    bad move
    nearly every release has some sort of major problem: from the early versions with not honoring the announce interval, the middle releases with corrupting files, bad ratio reporting and memory leaks up to the infamous 0.9x branch (file corruption *again*, router death, problems connencting to official BitTorrent, BitTornado, ABC, etc.) and the 1.0 to 1.0.3 releases are easy to shot down remotely:
    http://trac.transmissionbt.com/ticket/667

    Of course, those bugs are fixed, sometimes they are really fast doing that. But one can indeed wait, with which bugs they will surprise us (tracker staff and the other peers in the swarm) next. Indeed, quality control is bad – and Transmission isn’t worth the trouble at all.

  • tallman

    Latest rtorrent for the masses!

    ollie, +1

  • Anonymous

    Ubuntu users can’t handle rTorrent.

    No offense towards them.

  • Mark

    Awesome!
    Transmission is by far the best. No bloat, just functional interface. It’s not as awesome as on the mac, but I completely support this decision.

  • .

    It certainly looks like a Gnome application – extremely simplistic. Too simplistic for my taste, but then again I don’t use Gnome anyway.

    I’ve been quite happy with KTorrent, which ships with Kubuntu.

  • ,

    What, graphics for a BT app?

    I have used, use, and will use Aria2.

  • Anonymous

    Ktorrent has DHT, PeerGuardian, File pre-allocation, Zeroconf and UPnP.

    Go KDE!

  • K…

    Use uTorrent and get familiar with RIAA and same sort of organizations. Because uTorrent is now officially maintained and marketed by BitTorrent Inc. uTorrent sends all your usage data to RIAA’ cheers!

  • lulz

    Yes, best client for X is Ktorrent, it has DHT, PeerGuardian, zeroconf, UPnP, web interface and more.

  • Amorrn

    Deluge Torrent is awesome on Ubuntu. It was my default client while my Windows box was out of service.

  • Julius

    [quote comment="276325"]No DHT.

    Nice try, NEXT![/quote]

    DHT is for amateurs.

  • skzo

    Transmission is by far the best torrent client, good move imo

  • Kazuma

    I’ve been using Transmission on my Mac and it has proven to be a stable solution for my torrents. For the normal users (which most the Ubuntu users are) it’s a good client to include in their releases.

  • popo boldo

    well utorrent is a proprietary project now, so i’m glad they didn’t put it in, transmission looks like a good choice, but personally, i will replace it with azureus anyway…

  • jdong

    Hi,

    I am an Ubuntu developer and am currently packaging clutch for Ubuntu. I hope for it to be in Hardy so that we can just one-click install it. See http://revu.tauware.de/details.py?package=clutch for the status.

  • anon

    lol I still use utorrent 1.6.1. I will not upgrade to 1.7+ EVER/ 1.6 is stable AND has all the features I want. Now, for linux, I prefer rtorrent.

  • Guillaume Pelletier

    Deluge is FAR better, i’ve tried both of them. Just my grain of salt though…

  • Chris

    I applaud the team for putting something else in other than the BitTorrent client. That thing sucks so bad it defys explanation.

    I am however firmly planted in the ktorrent camp and pimp it whenever possible (including now).

  • scubanator87

    this client is not nearly as feature rich as deluge. Deluge supports dht, blocklists, upnp, and more. Best part, it uses a plugin based system so its as light as you want! Not to mention it supports ALL OSs. Deluge ftw!!!

  • Chomp

    From what I read this is missing a lot of features(that should be standard) and it looks incredibly simplistic. Perfect for Ubuntu users and their Gnome DE! No DHT, no PG, and a lot of other missing features. I wouldn’t be surprised if it didn’t come with protocol encryption. Good job Canonical, pretty soon all of your converts will come from the clueless land of Windows to the clueless land of Ubuntu and Gnome. Please keep this poison out of Kubuntu, Ktorrent is quite sufficient.

  • seeder

    Transmission is ok but if you are a power user you will use Azureus .. it has all the features you can think of ..

  • Ernest-oh

    [quote comment="276344"][quote comment="276336"]pics or it didn’t happen[/quote]

    allah!

    [/quote]

    ^^ Fixed

  • Anon

    Everything great in software has always
    originated from Linux! ty Linus.

  • iain

    [quote comment="277693"]Transmission is ok but if you are a power user you will use Azureus .. it has all the features you can think of ..[/quote]

    I am a power user who does not use Azuereus. QED, your premise is false.

  • iain

    [quote comment="277693"]Transmission is ok but if you are a power user you will use Azureus .. it has all the features you can think of ..[/quote]

    I am a power user who does not use Azureus. QED, your premise is false.

  • BramTourette

    Too bad Transmission can’t be used at private trackers. It has had a bug for as long as I can remember that makes it report a few million terabytes uploaded to the tracker and yes, that will get you banned. I don’t know if it’s fixed but it was still there a year ago and had been there pretty much all the time so my guess is they still haven’t fixed it.

  • Mister Name

    New versions of Transmission and Clutch were released.

  • stoeptegel

    What about the way too short interval with reconnecting to peers, it is rediculous…

    Is this fixed already?
    KTorrent is faster though with it’s nicer value.

  • bobonmyknob

    Transmission is a beautiful, easy to use client, I love it.

    Those suggesting Azureus can blow me. Every time I tried Azureus on Linux or Windows there was a crash, file which didn’t save, a Java related error, or some other fucking problem.

    And sorry, no, it wasn’t MY fault, I scrounged several forums, wikis, help sites, IRC, you fucking name it, it didn’t matter what I tried Azureus always wanted to throw me some curveball.

    If Azureus is your choice and it works for you, I’m happy, but for me it just never worked, and no I’m not willing to try it again and no I don’t care about your poor rebuttals to my post, your ego doesn’t matter so save yourself and others the pain of trying to feel better defending something you enjoy, no one cares.

    Transmission is great, Ubuntu is smart for choosing it.

  • Jza

    Transmission has no IP blocking. WTF?

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  • Anonymous

    [quote comment="277942"]New versions of Transmission and Clutch were released.[/quote]

    That was fixed long ago.

  • Anonymous

    [quote comment="277877"]Too bad Transmission can’t be used at private trackers. It has had a bug for as long as I can remember that makes it report a few million terabytes uploaded to the tracker and yes, that will get you banned. I don’t know if it’s fixed but it was still there a year ago and had been there pretty much all the time so my guess is they still haven’t fixed it.[/quote]

    This was fixed long ago (ignore the last post. ;) )

  • Barney

    Why not deluge? The interface is much nicer, as the most relevent details for each torrent are display tabularly. Transmission is alright, but nothing on Deluge. *sigh*

  • Snarius

    The CPU overhead from Deluge and Azureus can be very noticeable on slower computers (what Ubuntu is designed to run on). Transmission is the obvious choice here. In fact it was the obvious choice when Transmission 0.5 came out.

  • DEBob

    [quote comment="276321"]Awww, thought it would be uTorrent :p[/quote]

    Unfortunately, uTorrent is not yet compatible with Linux. Although there are rumors a Linux version will be made soon (no clue if it’s true).

  • Anonymous

    Deluge just sucks & is developed by incompetent programmers. Transmission is the best choice.

  • Rasta

    Yes, deluge is both unstable AND resource hog too. It’s written in Python, so it can’t be fast or lightweight. Just look at it’s resource usage when you run it. It uses 30-40 megs less then Azureus, so i prefer Azureus. Transmission – too simple, like “kidware” or something.

  • Pablo

    Looks ugly in ubuntu.

  • Patrick

    Deluge wouldn’t be bad if it actually worked. Unfortunately it crashes more often than a drunk NASCAR driver.

    Azureus may have a lot great features, but it’s resource usage is ridiculous.

    Utorrent is great on windows, but it’s not a Linux application. Using wine just slows things down.

    Transmission is way to simple. It has a cool icon though.

    Ktorrents alright, but it could be better.

    It’s a pity that can’t meld all the bit’s of the the top clients to make a super client.

  • Anonymous

    I’m actually getting the same sort of speeds with transmission then with utorrent, I’m quite happy to no longer have to deal with a buggy wine runtime. DHT will come, give it time. and lets not kid ourselves, Gnome BT sucked serious anus. Its nice to see a proper client in heron.

  • X3STeNLiTE

    absolute stablity. NO DHT NO GHOST PEER(S)

  • name

    no windows?

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