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Recommend a good torrent app?

R

Ripmax2000

macrumors regular
Original poster
Aug 31, 2005
117
3
Hi everyone, just need a bit of help - I have been using Azureus for a long time which I found great, but all of a sudden it won't work on any of my computers (some sort of firewall issue - I've tried everything) so I've had to use Transmission instead.

I now have the need to download only specific files from a torrent like I used to do in Azureus but Transmission does not have that feature.
Does anyone know any other apps that will let me select the files I want to download?

Thank in advance.
 
only azureus will let you do that. did you recently upgrade it cause i hear the old version (2.5..??) works better than the new release as it has some problems.
 
Azureus because it is the only torrent client on the mac with transport encyption, so that's my only option. If you are on a college campus, many block torrenting, but encrypting traffic gets around that (and gets you better speeds)
 
I love transmission, what kind of specific files are you trying to download? There are torrent websites that you can use to browse, legal and illegal material.
 
Is this no good?

Xtorrent.

I don't use these apps, but I know the guy (David Watanabe) who made it did inquisitor for Safari + Newsfire and makes some quality software.

Edit: He says selective file downloadingis planned for future versions. So I don't think it suites your needs yet.

Double Edit: Didn't read epochblue's post before typing this.
 
RaMaz said:
i use Transmission, only the best!
Click to expand...
s/best/mediocre/
elppa said:
I don't use these apps, but I know the guy (David Watanabe) who made it did inquisitor for Safari + Newsfire and makes some quality software.
Click to expand...
Hmm...eye candy or quality software?

I wouldn't ever call xtorrent quality software, not until everyone realizes that he's charging $20 for an interface to libtransmission. there's just so many things wrong with that on so many levels...

I will gladly stick to my free azureus, rtorrent and bittornado with tflux for my dedicated server. and utorrent on windows when i get the chance.

To the OP: Maybe you should fix your firewall/nat issue more than focusing on the clear obvious pathetic limitations of a few torrent apps for macosx. ( :( )
 
janey said:
Hmm...eye candy or quality software?

I wouldn't ever call xtorrent quality software, not until everyone realizes that he's charging $20 for an interface to libtransmission. there's just so many things wrong with that on so many levels...

I will gladly stick to my free azureus, rtorrent and bittornado with tflux for my dedicated server. and utorrent on windows when i get the chance.

To the OP: Maybe you should fix your firewall/nat issue more than focusing on the clear obvious pathetic limitations of a few torrent apps for macosx. ( :( )
Click to expand...

Not really. People charge for open source software all the time. Mac OS X is based on open source software and you pay Apple for that don't you?

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is open source software, yet people still pay for that.
 
Cromulent said:
Not really. People charge for open source software all the time. Mac OS X is based on open source software and you pay Apple for that don't you?

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is open source software, yet people still pay for that.
Click to expand...

I think the point was that DW took libtransmission, a GPL'd library, and instead of respecting what the GPL says and making his application open-source, he basically pipes to/from the library into his GUI and effectively circumvents the license restrictions so he doesn't have to open-source his app.

Is it legal? Of course. Is it crappy? You bet. And to the best of my knowledge, he's not even contributing any "enhancements" to the libtransmission core back into the project.

So while you're point is valid, you pay for OS X, but the Darwin core is sourced. You pay for Red Hat, but the core of Red Hat is open sourced. You pay for Xtorrent, but his app is closed source (even his modified version of libtransmission is closed). At least that's my understanding of the situation...
 
epochblue said:
I think the point was that DW took libtransmission, a GPL'd library, and instead of respecting what the GPL says and making his application open-source, he basically pipes to/from the library into his GUI and effectively circumvents the license restrictions so he doesn't have to open-source his app.

Is it legal? Of course. Is it crappy? You bet. And to the best of my knowledge, he's not even contributing any "enhancements" to the libtransmission core back into the project.

So while you're point is valid, you pay for OS X, but the Darwin core is sourced. You pay for Red Hat, but the core of Red Hat is open sourced. You pay for Xtorrent, but his app is closed source (even his modified version of libtransmission is closed). At least that's my understanding of the situation...
Click to expand...

My understanding is that he hasn't done anything to libtransmission. If he had he would be obliged (legally) to feed it back into the open source project. What he has done is build a nice closed source UI on top of an open source base. Which is EXACTLY the same as Mac OS X.
 
Ripmax2000 said:
Hi everyone, just need a bit of help - I have been using Azureus for a long time which I found great, but all of a sudden it won't work on any of my computers (some sort of firewall issue - I've tried everything) so I've had to use Transmission instead.
Click to expand...

Even if you're sure you've tried everything, it doesn't hurt to check again, since you're unlikely to find a good replacement for Azureus. There's a great Azureus wiki that explains how to forward ports, avoid traffic shaping and many other things. Check that out if you haven't already.
 
Cromulent said:
My understanding is that he hasn't done anything to libtransmission. If he had he would be obliged (legally) to feed it back into the open source project. What he has done is build a nice closed source UI on top of an open source base. Which is EXACTLY the same as Mac OS X.
Click to expand...

I know he edited it at least a little - he had a fix for libtransmission's reporting bug well before it was released in Transmission.

I suppose it's possible he was using a SVN version of libtransmission to do that, but I'd always heard that he made the edit himself.

Whatever - point is, use Transmission, not Xtorrent :D
 
Cromulent said:
Not really. People charge for open source software all the time. Mac OS X is based on open source software and you pay Apple for that don't you?

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is open source software, yet people still pay for that.
Click to expand...

Legally what Watanabe did is okay under the BSD MIT license or whatever libtransmission is licensed under (but I know it's not GPL). I just don't have much respect for someone who practically takes libtransmission verbatim, creates an interface, and charges $20 for it. Mac OS X is not as such, you are paying for more than just Aqua, you're paying for a bunch of the apps that come with, other Apple-created applications and tweaks... RHEL is completely open source, companies pay for support and maintenance and NOT the software. You can legally get your own copy of RHEL's source code for free if you don't want to pay for support because this is required under the GPL (something not required by libtransmission's license), or you can use Fedora, which is what RHEL is sorta based on.

epochblue said:
I think the point was that DW took libtransmission...
Click to expand...
Regardless of his contributions to libtransmission (if at all), you're exactly right...it's sorta crappy to take so much and keep all the goodies to yourself. The least he could do is contribute code or fix issues with libtransmission...or donate some of the xtorrent payments to the project as well. Many others have written code that he's just taken and used for his own needs.

I refuse to support any developer like that. Particularly one who wishes to be paid $20/copy of his torrent app that has not even half the features of Azureus, just looks better, and is the laughingstock of a bunch of places because xtorrent is like the first not-entirely-****** shareware bittorrent client.

Besides, with multiple torrents active, the resources used by all the applications are crazy large. So really, I will willingly lose out on the useless but pretty interface if I can get rss feeds to work, I have a web-based interface, my client isn't banned from half a dozen sites, my client's code is open-source, and my client is free. Cause the biggest two gripes about Azureus on this forum is that 1. it's too resource-hoggy, and 2. it's ugly.

Cromulent said:
What he has done is build a nice closed source UI on top of an open source base. Which is EXACTLY the same as Mac OS X.
Click to expand...
Yes, but Mac OS X comes with more than just a nice closed source UI for an open source base. Oh wait, but it's also not like Apple hasn't contributed back to communities it's borrowed source from (like, oh, maybe...the biggie...Safari, perhaps?)
 
janey said:
Besides, with multiple torrents active, the resources used by all the applications are crazy large. So really, I will willingly lose out on the useless but pretty interface if I can get rss feeds to work, I have a web-based interface, my client isn't banned from half a dozen sites, my client's code is open-source, and my client is free. Cause the biggest two gripes about Azureus on this forum is that 1. it's too resource-hoggy, and 2. it's ugly.
Click to expand...

To be fair, I have 8 torrents active currently (a number I consider to be fairly high), and Transmission is only running at 30MB and 2.5% CPU, so I don't think it's that resource hungry.

I saw similar numbers with BitRocket a while back, but don't know how it handles resources currently. Azureus was always a HUGE resource hog (the JVM will do that), and I can't speak to Xtorrent.

Just wanted to clear that up a little...
 
epochblue said:
To be fair, I have 8 torrents active currently (a number I consider to be fairly high), and Transmission is only running at 30MB and 2.5% CPU, so I don't think it's that resource hungry.
Click to expand...
Define active? I don't mean just open and idling.

If you actually have torrents where you're downloading/uploading to a lot of peers and using up a lot of bandwidth (as in, like 100mbit uploads, not 500kbit DSL or something), Azureus performs admirably, but it uses the same huge amount of resources a lot of other clients (like rtorrent and utorrent and transmission). They're all the same, and Azureus even a bit hoggy, when you've only got a handful of torrents idling.

With bittornado right now I got a server load upwards of 2 and almost 1gb memory and CPU usage with two 50gb torrents uploading at a combined ~8000KB/s with around 70 connections each on a single core athlon 64...:rolleyes:
 
janey said:
Define active? I don't mean just open and idling.

If you actually have torrents where you're downloading/uploading to a lot of peers and using up a lot of bandwidth (as in, like 100mbit uploads, not 500kbit DSL or something), Azureus performs admirably, but it uses the same huge amount of resources a lot of other clients (like rtorrent and utorrent and transmission). They're all the same, and Azureus even a bit hoggy, when you've only got a handful of torrents idling.

With bittornado right now I got a server load upwards of 2 and almost 1gb memory and CPU usage with two 50gb torrents uploading at a combined ~8000KB/s with around 70 connections each on a single core athlon 64...:rolleyes:
Click to expand...

I suppose if you define active that way, then, no, my torrents aren't active :D However, to be fair, even if I just had Azureus open, it takes more than 30MB of RAM....sooo, I suppose it's all relative. :)
 
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