Don’t use uTorrent. It’s a scam.
Just remember that without a vpn, any torrent client is still basically broadcasting your ip and what you are downloading
Is there a sexual deviant in your house? Find out now!
You mean, like another one?
Yes, there is. I’m it.
I think a lot of nontechnical people or computer newbies have an assumption in their head that if you want free shit, you’ll have to pay in other ways, like with advertising or tracking. It’s just the way of the world that nothing is free. There’s no free lunch. If a bittorrent client that you use to get free movies has ads, there must be no better options. We’re bombarded with this idea constantly. Television, radio, streaming, social media. You get it for free but pay with your attention to ads. We’ve all been this person at some point.
Then you discover that there are other options, that there are groups of passionate nerds dedicating half of their lives to making useful stuff, distributing it to the world, and expecting nothing in return. This can’t be real, right? What’s the catch? I thought making software was so hard and boring that nobody would do it in exchange for nothing. But it’s real. All this time you’ve been using crap software that nags you to try their other product, promotes products which have no earthly use, secretly captures information you expect to remain private, but there was this amazing thing outside the castle walls which does none of that. How did I not know about this before? Who are these altruistic people? I want to meet them.
Then you dig in more and find out about the free software movement. Some old hippie at MIT was mad he couldn’t get his printer working because the manufacturer refused to supply the source code. He saw software being closed up and becoming industrial rather than academic, transitioning to making a profit, and couldn’t bear it. Then we got linux, and all the systems around it, and all the distros, and there was once IBM who created the open PC standard, the copyleft/permissive division over licenses, and so on. Somewhere in the world, there is a 14-year-old learning about all this for the first time just as we did, and maybe it’s all a little different because of AI and smartphones and that Stallman is more well-known to be sort of a creep, but it’s still part of the history for how we got to where we are today.
It dawns on you that uTorrent is a trick and qBittorrent is the genuine, real deal. They’re both “free” but one of them is more free than the other. One claims to be free, but was only created to make somebody passive income for eternity. The other is a bittorent client, a devoted implementation of a specification for an open protocol (the most basic of which is only a few pages long). Bittorrent is simple, fundamental infrastructure and there’s absolutely no reason a client needs to show you ads or siphon away your data.
First, I want to express my appreciation for the post. It’s well written and thought provoking. Thank you for taking the time to write it.
I was the person you described in the first paragraph until the last few years, starting with my first Linux distro. It was the doorway into a world of amazingly functional yet free software.
I’m still gratefully surprised on a regular basis at the sheer amount and scope of FOSS. I spent the evening rooting my LG TV, the one product I most grudgingly enjoyed (fuck LG’s surveillance) and not only was I able to disable said surveillance, but tweaking some settings and installing a few homebrewed applications has made my TV so much better. Even the Plex application, PlxNative, is leagues better than stock.
Now I look like some sort of tech wizard to my family, but all of this is truly due to the contributions of the very community you describe - I’m just a monkey that can read a guide and push buttons. The real fucking wizards here are those contributing to these projects.
After degoogling I noticed that FOSS usually comes with less convenience and maturity, so you choose either your data or you loose the bells and whistles.
Depends on where in the curve the enshittification of the competition has become. Windows 11 seems like convenience and maturity, until you realize that desktop Linux has been a far more functional product for years, and it doesn’t what you take, take, take from you every chance it can get.
Photoshop seems like convenience and maturity, until you realize you have options that don’t want to charge you hundreds of dollars a month.
Hell, after using both Adobe Premiere and DaVinci Resolve, I just flat out prefer the latter. And the improvements Blackmagic has put out for the last few major releases prove that they will continue to improve their software. Granted, Resolve isn’t exactly FOSS, but it is free, and I can at least respect them way way more than Adobe’s shitty business models.
Aria2
Just setup the config file and use a vpn
uTorrent has been compromised for years. I like Transmission for its simplicity.
Yeah nearly 20 years I think. It’s not open either. If you can’t figure this out god help you rawdogging the internet with torrents.
100%. I stopped using them a very long time ago after they changed their UI to what it is now. I realized then it was compromised because the UI no longer served a useful purpose and instead prioritized visuals and engagement.
It’s interesting how a UI overhaul can be a red flag. Recently for me it was Bitwarden’s overhaul a little while back with all the cute emoji like graphics and rounded corners and stuff
Proton vpn is next on my chopping block.
Nice, I’ve been looking over alternatives for exactly that myself. Let me know if you find a good one. This world sure is in a state
I run Deluge for the same reason. AutoRemovePlus plugin and a couple others go a long way and just like Transmission it has a web-ui for remote management, so I can VPN back to my home network and manage deluge from my phone’s browser.
This has been the case for at least like 15 years. Baffles me that people still don’t get the memo
What baffles me is why anyone still uses torrents when we have Usenet and Debrid services. Why wait for seeds, when you can just get a direct download of the exact same content at your internet connection’s maximum download speed?
I don’t think the vast majority of torrent users are waiting for seeds, they’re just grabbing current popular stuff with a zillion seeders that finishes downloading within a few minutes.
Usenet is to ne paid tho
But it’s worth it, because having Debrid/Usenet allows you to steam anything you want instantly. Can’t do that with torrents unless the file is heavily seeded. Meanwhile I can stream anything I want at anytime. For me that alone is worth the cost. Plus like the other person said, you could spend hundreds on multiple steaming services, or you could spend $3-10/mo and watch anything you want in a single app like Stremio or Nuvio.
It costs, but it costs a fraction of what you’d pay for subscriptions, and it’s safer than torrents overall
Yeah, as soon as ads started popping up I knew shit was going downhill.
I’m glad qbit has held the line so far, but I’m always spooked to download the newest update for fear that it may be the one that introduced AI or some other bloat.
even if they did, there are a million other options that are just as good.
Not really, qBittorrent has the best feature set
You can also run qBittorrent in a docker container behind an always on VPN. Very nice for those with a little arr in their lives. 🏴☠️
For maximum privacy, I have qBittorrent on an air gapped system. Good luck catching me FBI!
/s
I took the above setup one step further and never plugged in the power!
Yes qbittorrent and gluetun in a docker container is very handy.
It took me a while to figure out gluetun. Once it’s all setup and configured correctly, it’s great !
Any resources you found handy to get you going? I am getting started with Docker and would love any advice!
The official documentation of the thing you want to setup is usually the best source of information.
This was the setup I had recently, but recent versions of gluetun just couldn’t maintain a connection. I tried with three different VPN providers and they all dropped connection within 12 hours.
You can run qBittorrent outside docker and configure it to only bind to the network interface for the VPN (in Tools->Options->Advanced->Network Interface).
Unless for some strange reason your VPN connection is constantly renaming the network interface when it starts, this should work fine and make sure qBittorrent never sends any data outside the VPN connection.
This is Linux, so there’s usually more than one way to get the same result.
My torrent client is running in docker on my NAS, so running it outside of docker is a no-go. I switched back to my old setup of using a docker container that combines both qbittorrent and openvpn in the same container. Smooth sailing with no hitches at all. I can’t share the VPN across containers anymore, but qbittorrent was the only container that actually needed it.
Maybe I’ll get it working one day. Today is just not that day.
I’ve heard some people have that issue, check out binhex’s qbit container with built-in VPN handling.
This also means you can run multiple instances very easily. I personally run one instance for public trackers, then an entirely separate instance for private trackers. It makes managing private seeding rules much easier, and helps avoid accidental hit-and-runs because of a dumb misconfiguration.
1000% this. Get on a private tracker and setup your glutun/qbit docker container and you never have to worry about your ratios or bring had by the feds. It’s so nice. My jellyfin setup with Seerr gets a lot of traffic from my whole family. All of it is running on second hand hardware from office e-waste auctions that I’ve spent maybe $250 on over the last 4-5 years. Way cheaper than paying for all the subscription streamers. And I got to learn a fuckload of cool stuff I never would have otherwise.
you can also manually tell it which network to use and select the vpn so if the vpn stops working it loses internet rather than continuing to run unprotected.
Alternatively a server-only qBittorrent (controllable via the web-interface only) without docker (package: qbittorrent_nox) behind an always on VPN, configured to only bind to the network interface of the VPN so that it doesn’t send any data outside the VPN does the same but it’s much lighter so you can put it in shitty-shit hardware.
This is what I have in the cheap mini-PC which I use as Homeserver/NAS/TV Media Player.
I’ve been using a split tunnel to make sure qbit stays behind the VPN, but I like this idea too, feels like there’s some redundancy.
I actually run two instances of gluetun running two VPN seats configured for two different countries and a script that speed tests both every hour and switches what network is piped into qbit based on how fast the speed test was with some logic for if I am uploading more or downloading more on the client. Quite proud of it tbh.
You can lock qBT to a specific network adapter in the settings. I think it’s somewhere in the advanced settings. Lock it to using your VPN interface, and it will only be able to connect when your VPN is active. By default, it will attempt to use any active network to connect, and things like split tunnel or kill switches can still allow leaks in the few moments between a disconnect and the software killing other connections. But by locking qBT to a specific network adapter, you ensure it won’t even attempt to use alternative connections when your VPN is disconnected.
Yeah, I do that, although qbit lately has been difficult, and I have to do this thing where I toggle to any interface and then back to IVPN. But yeah, I like redundancy in my piracy for sure. Got a letter about 20 years ago (or my dad did), and so I’ve tried my best to avoid it. Well, I guess my best would be not pirating stuff, but that’s impossible.
It’s stacked, even.
Transmission gang checking in.
I use qbittorrent, but I respect Transmission
Linux+Transmission master race represent
Got Linux and Deluged running on a Raspberry Pi myself.
We can be friends :)
Yes! Via tremc
It’s been malware for at least a decade, I think. It was good when it was first released but quickly went downhill.
i’m pretty sure version 2.2.1 was the last version before the corporate takeover and malware was baked in
Holy shit. Utorrent is still around??
You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain.
I’ve seen much more people using Transmission on Linux compared to other torrent software, is there a specific reason why Linux users gravitate towards it?
It’s simple and bundled with some distros by default.
Bundling with distros explains a lot. I’ve been a Deluge user even before I moved to Linux but a new user’s much more likely to stick with the first torrent tool that works; which in this case is Transmission that comes by default.
Lots of Linux users are focused on reducing resource usage, and Transmission is extremely lightweight compared to other torrent programs. It also comes bundled directly with some distros, so lots of Linux users don’t even need to install it manually.
Well packaged by the distros? Transmission works out if the box on my Debian systems.
It’s very minimalistic and lightweight compared to QBitTorrent.
However, if you prefer extensibility or if you like the uTorrent UI, then QBitTorrent would be better.
We had stopped using qbittorrent on Linux because we couldn’t figure out how to get it to stop leaking our IPV6. At the time, it was a few versions behind the windows build too, so it seemed as if it was Windows first, this pushing is towards another client, which ended up being Transmission.
Not that it matters because you are using transmission now but if you are in preferences under advanced there is an option for network interface. If you choose your VPN connection there from the drop down the app won’t connect outside of using that interface. So if the VPN goes down or hasn’t been connected or what not… the app should just read it as no internet connection.
Does transmission have that feature? I still rock qbittorrent for that but I haven’t explored Transmission at all
Not sure I haven’t used transmission much. I’m lazy and used to use qbittorrent because of its search feature was handy. Skip going to a bunch of sites hunting for something and just search it directly from the app. We now have seerr setup, so I don’t use it as much but it’s been a solid setup over the years. Set the machine to split tunnel the VPN, run qbit through the VPN and then host jellyfin or what not on the same machine, so you can kick off a download in sequential order, have the download location set to your jellyfin library, so you just refresh the movies list, and start watching while it downloads. I’m so lazy I’d use rustdesk to remote to the laptop that hosted it so I didnt have to walk to the other room.
Basically spouse says “I heard such and such is good” and then id kick it off and in about 2 minutes we’d be watching it.
(In that setup you don’t need to expose jellyfin to the internet or have a domain, you can just download the jellyfin app on your Roku/android/w.e tv and set the server to http://the.local.ip.address:8096/ and your good to go
For me the same as for others: It was the first option when searching for “bittorrent”, it works, it is easy to use, it does not hog a huge amount of resources, it has good features.
Haven’t really bothered looking into other torrent software after originally starting using Transmission something like over a decade ago.
Barely using either anymore.
*arr stack all talks to RealDebridClient just as if it were qbitorrent and it proxies torrent through debrid provider.
Thats how prowlarr gets all my Linux distros.
What about Deluge?
Was looking for this comment as I have been using deluge for a LONG time.
Man I remember pivoting from uTorrent to Deluge forever ago, then swapping from that to qbittorrent
What a blast from the past
Deluge is awesome but it uses more resources than other alternatives. As another poster mentioned it also struggles with torrents with many files.
It’s a good client unless you’re into archiving giant torrents with thousands of files. Deluge can’t handle them, actually most clients can’t.
qBittorrent and BiglyBT can and that’s about it.
Don’t forget about rTorrent.
I remember when I replaced Azureus with utorrent. It was amazing - azureus killed my computer and utorrent in its entirety was around 2MB and could handle all the torrents I threw at it. That and azureus/vuze started bundling adware!
I’d moved off to headless torrent clients by the time I read about utorrent bundling malware but I think it goes back to 2011.
Malware bundling was a risk of unofficial sources for the uTorrent installer - real malware-ification began around 2014-16.
Yeah, I ditched my first private tracker because they enforced use of uTorrent. Kickbacks I assume. I’ve heard they don’t anymore, but I still consider them compromised.
Could have been inertia. uTorrent used to be pretty good a long time ago.
Nah, this was only, like, 5-6 years ago.
