Introducing (native!) µTorrent for Linux

If you've ever looked into the various programs available to download via bittorrent, you will probably have discovered µtorrent. Back then it was probably already tiny and full-featured at the same time. It even had customizations to better run inside WINE. But it didn't run natively on Linux. Of course that made the very low resource bittorrent client much more resource hungry. Now this all changed. (Screenshots inside)



µTorrent is only available as "alpha" release, but as it often is with that program, even pre-releases are very stable. And the usability -- one would not expect much from an alpha release here either -- is excellent. It comes as a tar package with a binary inside called "utorrent-server". Why it's called "server" and not just "utorrent", I don't know. Fact is, though, that you can only control is via the web interface (or the config files).
µTorrent running inside Chrome in Ubuntu 10.04

There won't be a special µTorrent window on your desktop, but rather a tab in your browser. And it looks exactly like the Windows/WINE user interface. You can do everything the way you are used to doing it with utorrent, just inside your browser. Hence configuration is just as easy and comfortable.

It downloads as fast as you're used to from Windows and WINE and uses only about 2.5 MB of memory on my system. The average CPU usage on my celeron with 1.7 Ghz is 10 %. You can set it to automatically download torrent files saved inside a certain directory so you won't ever need to open the UI webpage. But if you do want to open it lots of nice graphs and statistics are waiting for you.

All you need to know to get started is the URL to connect to utorrent, user and password:
Url: http://localhost:8080/gui/
Username: admin
Password: (empty)

So go get it and try it out yourself! (Update: sorry about the broken link!)

7 comments:

  1. Howdy,

    I just went looking on muTorrent's site for information on this, but was unable to find anything. Also the "get it" link is broken as of right now.

    Did they rescind this?

    Thanks for the notice nonetheless.
    daemox

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  2. If its not open source then I doubt many Linux users will ever get into it. Deluge is by far the best right now, and we can see teh source (^_^)

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  3. Sorry about that broken link!
    And yes, it's not open source and won't be, because it's written in Assembler (making it much smaller and more efficient).

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  4. Are you saying that software coded in assembler can't be Open Source?

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  5. I don't know where you got that piece of information from, but uTorrent is written in C++.

    "Small executable size is achieved by avoiding the use of many libraries, notably the C++ standard library and stream facilities, and creating substitutes written specifically for the program. The executable is then compressed to roughly half of its compiled and linked size using UPX."

    Still, being in assembly doesn't mean it can't be open source.

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  6. Meh... I like KTorrent better...

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  7. @Davide: ok, I don't know where I was with my brain...

    Of course it could be, even if it wouldn't be as easy to read for most people...

    @Jookia: I'm not sure. I remembered having read it somewhere, but I'm no longer certain.

    @Jeremy: thanks for your thought-provoking and insightful comment ;)

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