Posted by on Feb 28th, 2007 -
Subscribe Mood: aggressive
KeyWords: utorrent, ktorrent, bit, torrent, bittorrent, comparison, review, linux, windows
KTorrent, Linux's uTorrent Alternative
by FrosT
Introduction
Recently converting over to Linux I have found that my favorite torrent program, uTorrent, is not supported by the Linux OS. This boggled my mind, and instead of using Wine for Linux, I went hunting for a new program that can be comparable to uTorrent for the Linux operating system and well I found one. KTorrent was the exact program I was looking for. Plain and simple plus very easy to configure! Honestly, if I had to choose between uTorrent and KTorrent, I would definitely choose KTorrent over uTorrent and here's why.
KTorrent's Ease of Use
KTorrent was very easy to use and configure. It gave you just the right amount of options to have total control of your torrents. uTorrent was also very easy to use and configure except it gave you a little too much options, and at times it seemed that some options did not work the way you wanted them to. Now it could just be the user, but with KTorrent when I set the Seeding ratio, I expect the torrent to stop seeding when this ratio is reached. I could never get uTorrent to stop seeding once that ratio was reached. But with KTorrent, I set that ratio to 1.5 and once it the 1.5 ratio, what did you know? KTorrent automatically marked the torrent as finished and stopped seeding! The other options are which ports to use for transfer and where to download files etc. which uTorrent does give you access to, but the way KTorrent has the options laid out make KTorrent remarkably easier and simpler to use than uTorrent.
Transfer Speeds of Torrents
When using uTorrent I would always wonder if I was getting the best speed out of that torrent and if my settings were a little bit off that would slow the torrent down. Not with KTorrent! Since I started using KTorrent I found that my speeds remain very high all the time without doing any special configuration. I have not even installed Peer Guardian on my new Linux system yet and KTorrent still works like a champ. I download everything a lot faster than I ever did because of the way KTorrent laid out the options and gave me the way to configure each port. Basically in every comparison KTorrent runs faster, and smoother with easy configurations than uTorrent ever would.
Ending Notes
When using Linux, I would highly suggest KTorrent over uTorrent with WINE. Due to the fact that KTorrent will provide you everything uTorrent does and than some, it should be an easily selection. No use in battling with WINE when you do not have to. As for windows users, uTorrent is probably your best bet of Bit Torrent software as I do not think KTorrent runs under Windows.
Posted by gdc on March 08th, 2007
Sorry I didn't read the above but in regards to earlier matters... =p
I know there's a few more words and I will award for "whilst" +4
Jim: That was hot, you scored +50points in one freekin' sentence nice!
haha. I'll add some more words when I remember...
Posted by anonymous on March 16th, 2007
As a newbie to linux and ktorrent use and performance, i definately support Mr kfrost article. Though i reckon the icons could be improved.......thats about all.
Posted by anonymous on December 19th, 2007
how come ktorrent unpacked has 11.2 MB, whereas utorrent has less thank 1MB ?
not quite the same thing, just a valid alternative
Posted by anonymous on January 14th, 2008
Then, not Than. Think "then" as time, "than" as choice. Rather have this THAN that.
sudo cp /etc/apt/sources.list /etc/apt/sources.backup1, then
sudo kate /etc/apt/sources.list
(Dapper)
Posted by anonymous on August 12th, 2008
good
Posted by anonymous on September 13th, 2008
RE: then/than comment...
What are you talking about? You're right, but that was JUST a bit random..
And what do those commands do?
And in relation to KTorrent, question: Azureus is available directly to Linux, so I'm asking - is that a better choice than KTorrent, or is KTorrent still top of the ladder?
Posted by anonymous on September 24th, 2008
Having Peer Guardian installed or not installed should not have any effect whatsoever on your torrents speed. PG2 is strictly for privacy purposes not to increase speeds of your downloads. Don't understand why you would even make a reference to PG2 like that in this article. As for a replacement for uTorrent on a Linux system I will take rTorrent over kTorrent any day of the week and if I did feel the need for a GUI I would just add wTorrent to my rTorrent configuration, thanks but no thanks to kTorrent.
Posted by anonymous on November 20th, 2008
extremely good
Posted by frost on November 20th, 2008
Reply to Anonymous on Sept. 23rd 2008:
PG2 will affect speeds as by blocking certain IPs it will help reduce packet losses that are being sent by those IPs. Since those type of people do not want you to have the torrent, they "seed" the torrent but end up having it send bad hashes which your client has to cipher through etc.
Posted by anonymous on February 05th, 2009
hi i hv a question.
Posted by anonymous on February 05th, 2009
my question is actually abt k torrent
is thr any one tht can help me.?.
i m using k torrent but the dwloading speed can reaches to its max level som tim which is only 50kb/s
i m using internet connection 512kb/s
any help or suggestion abt how to increase dwloading speed will b afrishaded..
thnx
rrajajee@hotmail.com
raja_asad_2@yahoo.com
Posted by anonymous on February 06th, 2009
rrajajee said: "but the dwloading speed can reaches to its max level som tim which is only 50kb/s"
Ktorrent shows speeds in kBps (with a capitol B for bytes). multiply that out to get bps (bits) and it shows that you're using most of your up bandwidth.
Posted by anonymous on July 22nd, 2009
Good tip. But KTorrent is not only an alternative to uTorrent is great software and its features. I am impressed as there is some "users" of linux (ex-windows), who want to use linux, more, fall into temptation to emulate the "exe", perhaps, miss the "NEXT", "NEXT", "NEXT", "OK."
Posted by anonymous on August 30th, 2009
I like KTorrent... but uTorrent via WINE seems a bit better to me, and here's why:
KTorrent has a tendency to crash, particularly while reserving space for files
KTorrent's memory and CPU footprints seem large to me compared to uTorrent's... worse, memory usage seems to grow over time (no new torrents added), suggesting a memory leak?
KTorrent's KDE-like appearance is a bit jarring to me... I suppose I should see if there are skins available to make it look more like uTorrent
KTorrent's "Stalled" status sometimes doesn't make sense to me... some torrents with plenty of connected peers (including seeders) get stalled and there's no indication of what can be done to correct the situation
Overall, I like KT... but I prefer uT. Just wish uT were open-source....
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