Alternatives to uTorrent
There has been a lot of controversy about the recent acquisition of uTorrent by Bram Cohen, the creator of the Bittorent protocol. Most users seem to be disturbed about the partnership between Bittorrent and the MPAA which started in fall 2005 with the agreement that illegal searches would be removed from its own Bittorrent search engine. The fear that the cooperation will affect the development of the popular uTorrent client seems to grow with every passing day.
"Following the acquisition, patented content delivery innovations made by BitTorrent, Inc. will be integrated in the µTorrent client in a manner that will remain seamless to the community of users. Ultimately, the integration of best-of-breed BitTorrent technology will result in an improved client and an enhanced user experience. It will also accelerate BitTorrent's plans to provide high-performance content delivery services that power websites seeking the most efficient platform for distributing large, high-quality files. Lastly, the incorporation of µTorrent's lightweight codebase strengthens the adoption of BitTorrent technology in embedded systems, including televisions, mobile phones and other non-PC platforms."
Utorrent on the other hand does not seem to be the only BitTorent client that is rumored to be affiliated with content creators and rights holders. Rumors emerged earlier this month that Azureus (VUZE) another popular client was transferring information about downloads and uploads to remote servers as well.
So what are some of the alternatives that you can use instead of uTorrent or Vuze? Below is a small list with options.
Alternatives:
Some users prefer to switch clients based on those rumors which is totally understandable. But which clients can be used except the most popular ones? Here is a list of alternatives.
- Deluge (cross-platform Linux, OS X and Windows) - A powerful client for all supported operating systems.
- gTorrent (Open Source, Linux) - Basic lightweight client for Linux.
- Halite (Open Source) - Has recently been updated after two years of inactivity.
- qBitTorrent (freeware, cross platform) - A free alternative to uTorrent that supports many of the popular client's features.
- Tixati (freeware, available for Windows and Linux) - A feature rich client supporting all important and several advanced features such as IP Filtering, RSS, DHT, magnet links and a lot more.
- XBT (Open Source) - A client and tracker.
Clients no longer in development:
- ABC (Open source) - Based on BitTornado.
- BitBuddy (freeware) - Has not been updated since 2006.
- BitSpirit (freeware) - No updates since 2010.
- BitTornado (Open Source, one torrent per window) - Has not been updated since 2006.
Some clients come close to match uTorrent's functionality. If I had to pick one, I'd probably select qBittorrent from the list as it is fast and cross-platform.
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Re: Azureus – I doubt that there would be something fishy going on in there. It’s an open source client, so anyone can see the source. It would be blatantly obvious, and easy to figure out exactly what data is sent and when.
The article you linked to shows absolutely no proof for their claims – just unsubstantiated accusations. I don’t think there is any reason for concern regarding Azureus. I think that dude is simply fishing for diggs.
I agree that the claims are not backed up with sources but it should at least make you think about it. Here are some additional sources for Azureus:
http://www.slyck.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=341913
I think best program ever was uTorrent 1.3 without all that useless stuff and limits.
Anyway, on my dedicated server I use TorrentFlux – it’s torrent with web-interface and user management system. Very easy and convinient to use.
One way of handling with the new situation would be to turn of automatic updates in uTorrent to make sure it does not update itself automatically with “problematic features”.
anyone has a link to a previous version of utorrent dating back from like 2 weeks ago or more
so i can revert to an older version..
http://oldversion.com/program.php?n=utorrent
Even if you use older version of utorent, that won’t save you from being blocked from the network by peer guardian and other torrent clients… and I can see it coming soon…. http://phoenixlabs.org/2006/03/07/the-µtorrent-fiasco/
Arctic works good too..though no DHT support. It’s made by the guy who made PeerGuardian ;)
I never knew there was this issue… will continue following this thread.
Artic v1.2.3 seems to have VERY VERY low footprint and do what I need to do, although its featureless compared to utorrent, bitcomet, azureus etc.
P.S. Even if its about ~700kb(the executable file) which is more than utorrent it uses less memory and cpu than the utorrent in the same load!! Try it, just to test it.
Whatever you do, don’t go on the uTorrent forum and post a feature request or ask for help.
For a ‘legitimate’ software company they run their forum an awful lot like 4chan lite. My experience.