Transmission-Qt Win Bittorrent Client
When you look at the most popular Bittorrent clients for Windows, you will probably notice that uTorrent is mentioned quite often. If you look over to Macintosh or Linux computer systems, you will likely hear the program name Transmission fairly often.
Transmission-QT is an unofficial Open Source port of that Bittorrent client for the Microsoft Windows operating system. It is an alternative to uTorrent, and maybe the better choice for users who work with Transmission on a Mac or Linux system.
Almost as important as the ability to download and seed files is support for popular features that users expect their Bittorrent client to support.
Transmission-QT users can tick off a lot of those features from their imaginary requirements list. The program supports features such as speed limits, encryption, PEX and DHT, a blocklist to prevent certain IP connections, the option to change the local port and a web client to manage the program from a remote web browser. It is definitely more than an average Bittorrent client offers, but not as much when compared to programs such as uTorrent.
The program is in many regards not as sophisticated as uTorrent. There is for instance no option to configure a transfer cap per day or month, no scheduler, no support for apps or add-ons, no torrent discovery options, and no option to stream video files even if they are still downloading.
That does not necessarily mean that the program is inferior. It all depends on what you want to use the program for. If you only want to download files then Transmission-QT is a perfectly fine choice. If you want to use those extra features that uTorrent or comparable clients offer then it is not the best of choices. It needs to be noted that Transmission-QT supports loading an IP blocklist while uTorrent does not.
Some users at least will like the program's simplicity and pick it because of that. Then again, uTorrent is not more complicated as all additional features are optional. If you do not want to use them, you simply ignore them.
Windows users who are looking for an open source Bittorrent client can take a closer look at Transmission-QT Win. The program is actively developed and definitely a solid application for downloading files via Bittorrent. The program is compatible with 32-bit and 64-bit editions of the Microsoft Windows operating system.
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Transmission is nice for Mac OS X, as it integrates well with the Aqua desktop. But for a bittorrent client that is consistent across all three major platforms AND offers the functionality of uTorrent, you don’t need to look any farther than Deluge. It has a similar interface to uTorrent, but is open-source and uses a plugin system to allow for extensible functionality. I’ve been using for a long time on Linux, and recently started using it on Windows computers instead of uTorrent in order to reduce the number of different applications I need to keep track of.
Tried it a little and I like it so far. I used to use Transmission on linux and wanted to have it on Windows for a long time, so this is great news for me. Utorrent has been getting more and more bloated just to cater for the newbie users so I can move on to this but I’ll need to test it for an extended period to be sure.
Have you done utorrent vs. bit torrent comparison lately? I’ve used Utorrent for some time and many friends seem to like bit torrent better…
always had good use out of transmission on linux, but see no reason to ditch utorrent for it on my win box.
utorrent DOES support ip blocklists, it’s just not advertised.
put an ipfilter.dat in %appdata%\utorrent, and you’re done.
you can either get a blocklist from somewhere, or use blocklist manager by bluetack, which you can use to make your own and even schedule updates and the like (this application can make multitple kinds of blocklists, though i ‘ve only ever used it for a utorrent one).
Good tips, thanks for posting it. The developer’s should consider adding an option to the program interface though to make it more accessible.
I use Flush 0.9.11 on linux. Transmission is very unpredictable when it comes to configuring port forwarding etc.
I’ve been using Transmission on a dedicated Linux torrent box for a couple years now. Before that uTorrent, KTorrent and others. Transmission is by far my favorite.
I’ve seen the QT version in the Linux Mint repo but never knew it had been ported to Windows. Interesting.