Easily share files on LAN with fellow Ubuntu users with Giver
Have you ever just wanted to quickly hand a file off to a fellow user on a LAN without having to resort to using an email client or shared folder? Wouldn't it be nice to just click on a username, send them a file, and have their desktop automatically notify them that the file has arrived?
Well...you can do that with the help of Giver. Giver is a networking tool that automatically detects other Giver users on your network and allows you to quickly and simply share files with them. I do hesitantly write this article only because it seems the development of Giver has come to a stop. That doesn't keep the application from working exactly as it should, and it still installs on just about any recent release of Ubuntu. So, even though development might have stopped for the moment, the application is still very valid and very useful. And in this article I will show you how to install and use this handy network file sharing tool.
Installation
The installation of giver is very simple. All you need to do is follow these steps:
- Open up the Add/Remove Software Tool.
- Search for "giver" (no quotes).
- Mark Giver for installation.
- Click Apply to install.
- When finished, close the Add/Remove Software tool.
When Giver is installed you can start up the tool by clicking Applications > Internet > Giver. This will open up the application and plant an easily accessible icon in the notification area.
Usage
As I have mentioned before, the usage of Giver is incredibly simple. The Giver Recipients window (see Figure 1)Â will automatically populate with anyone else on your LAN running Giver. This may take some time (depending on how many users there are and how fast your network is). You can give a file by clicking on the user you want and clicking either Give File or Give Folder. When you select either of these a file manager will open where you can navigate to the file and select it.
Once you have given the the file the recipient will see a notification (see Figure 2) that a user wants to give them a file.
When the file is received both sender and receiver will be notified of the success.
Preferences
There aren't much in the way of settings for Giver. If you right click the notification try icon you can select Preferences. When this new window opens (see Figure 3) you can then change your Name, Picture, and File location.
A word of warning: The only way I have been able to change the picture used for Giver is to use a Web Link. For some reason the File will not open a file manager window to browse for the image file.
By default Giver will save files transferred to you to the Desktop. If you don't want that click the File Location drop box and select where you want the files to be saved to.
Final thoughts
Although Giver might not be currently in development, it is still a very useful application that allows users to quickly exchange files over a LAN. It does not have the ability to share files outside of that LAN, but within a business or home, this is a nice tool to have around.
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And for those looking for a decent alternative that’s free and free from ads plus other crap (though I would recommend donating), then try qBittorrent: http://www.qbittorrent.org/
Why not use the portable version of uTorrent?
Just downlad the .exe from official website into a folder, create a text file in the same folder, rename the .txt file to settings.dat and start uTorrent. You can move the folder anywhere.
^Exactly…. in fact I would recommend avoiding all versions over 2.0, the torrent portion of the program hardly changed, it’s all the ads, ratings, and possible tracking features that require all the additional installs.
And this is why I never updated in a nutshell;
“Ads
More Ads (hit decline offer)
Even more ads (hit decline)”
Nope. I donated $25 several years ago to the utorrent crew.. possibly a decade… so I refuse to accept their reasoning for selling out so much.
You can turn off the ads.
qBittorrent FTW!
Qbittorrent your way out of this piece of crap.
+1 for Qbittorrent
I’m a long long time user of Bitcomet now and forever. Never any ads, no offers, nothing to decline, no sell out… little used due to the complex nature they still scare people away with, but their new install is a simple one click solution that discovers all settings on its own except firewalls.
They follow a simple idea…’share’… if you share you can possibly go faster than those who don’t share. You can even see connections* connected to you and of them who is sharing and who isn’t… then you can boot them / ban them or ignore them selectively ‘mwahahaha…’. We can set how much we share, with who, and how fast we share.
*in my personal experience over 95% of Azures and uTorrent users do not share, I boot them.
So those who believe Bitcomet is hard to understand, they haven’t been that since version 1.09a (current public release 1.35). Also Bitcomet installs a Firefox add-on to capture media from the temp directory. You can easily unload it using Firefox’s Add-on Options page.
Bottomline, Bitcomet is faster and easier to install/use. Signing up as a registered user will allow you to join the ranks as a sharing user. The more you share, the faster you can possibly go.
utorrent installs itself in appdata folder so it can inject malware without the UAC consent. Don’t use utorrent because it’s unsafe!
The best last version of utorrent is 2.2.1 build 25534